What is your biggest challenge right now, in relation to your development as a writer?
12 thoughts on “Reader Friday : Your Biggest Writing Challenge?”
Time & multiple interests. I want to write books, but I also have a lot of other creative interests (drawing and painting to name just a few). And every single one of them requires a significant time investment. Until I can hunker down and zero in, I’ll be delayed taking that next step in development.
My age. I wish I’d happened on Heinlein’s Rules when I was in my 20s or 30s.
Development as a writer . . . lessee, my biggest challenge is losing confidence when I read what I’ve written and it’s crap. I keep working at it, but I wonder sometimes if I’ll EVER learn how to write!
My biggest challenge . . . hmmm, where do I start? First, writing deep emotions. Second, knowing when to stop editing. New ideas pop while rereading. Finally, I’d like more time to write. To do that, I wish I could hire a chef to cook for the family; hire a chauffeur to drive the kids around; get the husband to clean the bathroom, including the toilet and the rest of the house. And many more duties. Well, we can all wish it, right?
My biggest challenge is finding a writing group where I live. I want to connect with writers near or above the stage I am now. Also, finding decent critique partners and beta readers. The last couple of times didn’t work out so well. I’m a firm person on deadlines, and all though they said they were…they weren’t.
Research problems. I’m writing a thriller that requires some apparently esoteric knowledge of assassination methods of a certain kind of killer who would have lived in in the Zhou Dynasty (1046 – 256 BC). Of course, I don’t speak or read Mandrain, either.
People have said to me, “Just find any kind of assassins in any historical era of China and use those.”
That’s fine, but that’s not how I do things. Maybe it’s pride–face it’s pride.
But I really would like to be accurate about things when the Big Guy falls in 2018 Europe.
I relate to all of what has been posted so far. Especially lack of confidence when I read drafts of what I’ve written, which leads to lack of confidence about what I am planning to write, which lately leads to doubts that at this rate whether I will even live long enough to learn how to write another really good book that will sell. Sorry for whining.
My biggest challenge now is making the step from writer to published writer. It takes so much faith and courage. But to get where I want to be, I have to put the books out there.
Kathryn, It’s funny you should pose this question, today.
I have a neighbor who suffers from some sort of problem requiring the support of a single crutch for moving about.
I start the morning off inside a screen room where plants share a space with my chair and a cooler I prop my legs up on.
I have two little girl rescue dogs that bark at the slightest movement outside our writing area in the cool part of the day. In southern Alabama that pretty much disappears; around ten-thirty each day. My challenge comes from the unexpected visit from my neighbor who is bored with the world and her husband of thirty-eight year marriage. Her chit-chat takes me right over the moon with anxiety increasing the end to my rewriting. Thank goodness it’s not a every day event.
Finding the time to read all the things.
Selling books.
Finding the time to begin new projects and complete the ones already in progress. I, too, have found it difficult to locate a helpful writer critique group and objective readers.
Time & multiple interests. I want to write books, but I also have a lot of other creative interests (drawing and painting to name just a few). And every single one of them requires a significant time investment. Until I can hunker down and zero in, I’ll be delayed taking that next step in development.
My age. I wish I’d happened on Heinlein’s Rules when I was in my 20s or 30s.
Development as a writer . . . lessee, my biggest challenge is losing confidence when I read what I’ve written and it’s crap. I keep working at it, but I wonder sometimes if I’ll EVER learn how to write!
My biggest challenge . . . hmmm, where do I start? First, writing deep emotions. Second, knowing when to stop editing. New ideas pop while rereading. Finally, I’d like more time to write. To do that, I wish I could hire a chef to cook for the family; hire a chauffeur to drive the kids around; get the husband to clean the bathroom, including the toilet and the rest of the house. And many more duties. Well, we can all wish it, right?
My biggest challenge is finding a writing group where I live. I want to connect with writers near or above the stage I am now. Also, finding decent critique partners and beta readers. The last couple of times didn’t work out so well. I’m a firm person on deadlines, and all though they said they were…they weren’t.
Research problems. I’m writing a thriller that requires some apparently esoteric knowledge of assassination methods of a certain kind of killer who would have lived in in the Zhou Dynasty (1046 – 256 BC). Of course, I don’t speak or read Mandrain, either.
People have said to me, “Just find any kind of assassins in any historical era of China and use those.”
That’s fine, but that’s not how I do things. Maybe it’s pride–face it’s pride.
But I really would like to be accurate about things when the Big Guy falls in 2018 Europe.
I relate to all of what has been posted so far. Especially lack of confidence when I read drafts of what I’ve written, which leads to lack of confidence about what I am planning to write, which lately leads to doubts that at this rate whether I will even live long enough to learn how to write another really good book that will sell. Sorry for whining.
My biggest challenge now is making the step from writer to published writer. It takes so much faith and courage. But to get where I want to be, I have to put the books out there.
Kathryn, It’s funny you should pose this question, today.
I have a neighbor who suffers from some sort of problem requiring the support of a single crutch for moving about.
I start the morning off inside a screen room where plants share a space with my chair and a cooler I prop my legs up on.
I have two little girl rescue dogs that bark at the slightest movement outside our writing area in the cool part of the day. In southern Alabama that pretty much disappears; around ten-thirty each day. My challenge comes from the unexpected visit from my neighbor who is bored with the world and her husband of thirty-eight year marriage. Her chit-chat takes me right over the moon with anxiety increasing the end to my rewriting. Thank goodness it’s not a every day event.
Finding the time to read all the things.
Selling books.
Finding the time to begin new projects and complete the ones already in progress. I, too, have found it difficult to locate a helpful writer critique group and objective readers.