Common Mistakes Writers Make

 

What are common mistakes writers make?

 

Mistake #1 – Self-doubt: Oh, this one can actually kill careers. Self-doubting writers lack confidence in their work. Projects get scuttled even before they can be finished. The anxiety and fear that their work will fail before it even sees the light of day holds many writers back from finishing what they start.

 

Mistake #2 – Not studying writing itself. Key mistakes get made out of sheer lack of education. An overall story can be really fantastic but so poorly executed that it’s unreadable. Mistakes like overwriting scenes and focusing on minutia versus pushing a story forward (and it’s all equal when it comes to fiction or nonfiction) can bog down your manuscript. You can hire a copy editor to clean up those minor mistakes, but the writing itself needs to be solid.

 

Mistake #3 – Writers who lack grammar skills and make their work almost impossible to read. Editing is a profession in and of itself. It’s not easy either. I recently helped my daughter with a college paper and cleaned it up for her. Her English 1B teacher, a veteran teacher, corrected her paper. I was shocked to realize her corrections were actually WRONG. I about fell out of my seat when my daughter’s grade got lowered over “mistakes” that were NOT mistakes. She even had ANOTHER English teacher tell her the same thing. Bad teaching aside, you need to at least have a basic mastery of grammar. Writing littered with mistakes becomes almost impossible to read, and those same mistakes become nothing but a distraction.

 

Mistake #4 – Losing track of your audience. No matter what you write, write it for your audience. Don’t get caught up in a love affair with your own work without consideration given to who will read it. I have put a lot of time and energy into figuring out how to appeal to my prospective audience for Kitty Wisdom. I always keep my audience front and center as I write. It’s the audience you hope will buy your book. I even went into the pet section of the bookstore to figure out what’s already available to ensure I was filling a gap in the market (a really great way to find out what’s selling).

 

A Super-Secret Weapon: Pour the foundation of your promotion months in advance of your book’s release. Begin engaging your audience long before your book launches. You will have a built-in readership primed and ready to invest in your book when it’s available. You may even have built up excitement over its release. I have been working my social media peeps to get them hyped up about Kitty Wisdom’s release. It’s super fun, too. 

 

Michelle Gamble is a professional writer, editor, publisher and marketing specialist. If you would like a free consultation on your writing, please send an email to info@3LPublishing.com.