Know Thyself Challenge: Day 2

Day 2: What is your biggest writing weakness, and what do you think you need to change to work on it?

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I would argue that my, and probably other writers too, biggest weakness as a writer would be a combination of the following:

• Procrastination
• Boredom
• Lots to say no time to say it
• Lack of boozes no I ain’t joking

You know… If I had… Well if perhaps life was…

Look, I’ll just bluntly honest, I’m lazy as all fuck! I love to write. With all my heart and soul, writing will forever my first love. I just don’t pay it enough attention and the ideas don’t flow as smoothly as they used to when I was younger. Of course when I was younger, I used to keep journals and write and write all day and all night. It was easy and convenient. I could be anywhere, doing anything and all I’d need is a pen and a journal. I have a million and one journals; partly cuz I love collecting them and partly cuz I use them for almost everything except actually collecting my thoughts. It’s quite expensive and annoying to keep collecting journals. But I do because sometimes they inspire me to think and write without interruption.

Buuuuuuuut again I’m lazy as fuck. If given a choice between sleeping, food and writing, I’d probably choose food, sleeping then writing. Yaaaaaaaaz in that exact order. #phatgurlworldproblems #sleeeeeeeeepisgoooood

With all that said, I know exactly how to remedy my laziness but honestly, there are times I just don’t wanna. I enjoy not having a necessity to do something. I enjoy sleeping waaaaaay more than developing a blog post. I also don’t have WiFi at home. don’t judge me! That’s probably measures right up there with me being lazy. The cost of Internet is a mutha fucker. I don’t understand why it’s so expensive or even how people afford internet service.

Rants aside, I think at times having these weaknesses sorta puts my writing in perspective. I’m all talk and no drive. There are times when I’m motivated to crank out posts every other day or week. But shit life happens at the most inopportune times for me. So I make up excuses as i am right nah to somehow make myself feel better about not writing. But what else is new?

Comment below and lemme know what  writing weaknesses you possess.

Thanks for reading…

the southern yankee

Know Thyself Challenge: Day 1

Day 1: What do you consider your greatest strength as a writer?

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I’ve been writing all of my life and blogging for the last five or six. With every year that I have been writing, I try to find ways not to use my writing especially my blog solely for my own personal psychological therapy session but without fail I go right back to what I’m accustomed to doing. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?

But at the same time, I feel taking a risk in my writing style if there is such a thing for me helps to break up the monotony. Experimenting with different genres of writing not only allows my readers to see a different side of the madness but it allows me to build my writer’s confidence. So I suppose in essence that’s my greatest strength. Being able to recognize when stepping out of the box is a good thing and not so much a nuisance.

Over the past few years, I have ventured into writing fiction which I fully recognize I’m no J.K. Rowling or Terry McMillian but it is something I have been truly afraid of since I was a student at SicEmU. I didn’t and sometimes still think I could write a good attention grabbing fictional story. There are  so many elements to a fictional story and so many rules of fiction that to be perfectly honest I ain’t willing to learn. But I try to anyway because I never know when the right person will stumble upon my blog and offer a book deal. If you’re out there email me!

Aside from taking the obvious risk outside the box, I honestly greatest strength a writer could ever possess is the willingness to learn about everything. Not just about the subject matter, audience or temperament of the story but about what goes into making a great story or blog post, which I’m always reading about. Being that I have a background in newspaper pagination, the visual look, both literally and metaphorically, is important to me. I’m always on Pinterest or other WordPress sites looking for inspiration for my own blog.

I am also incredibly lucky to have my sis as an editor. I don’t usually edit my posts… heavily. I honestly don’t like editing my own writing. I suppose because it always takes me a month and a half to write anything. Look how long it took me to post Day 1 of this challenge when I introduced it LAST WEEK which is soooooo not the damn point right now. My sis saves me from sounding a total uneducated fool. Having others proofread, solicited and unsolicited, is a great asset to have especially if the proofreading yields positive and constructive criticism that will be helpful and make you and your craft better.

Other strengths include:

• Being crazy
• Loving the happy juice
• Living vicariously through friends
• Having an active vivid imagination which always gets me in trouble
• Consuming ridiculous amounts of coffee trust me you want this

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What are some of your strengths?
Thanks for reading…
the southern yankee