Who Do You Want to Win?

Who Do You Think Will Win?

Everyone has strengths. Everyone has weaknesses. How you handle each can play an important part in how you develop as a writer.

I have two books that talk about making improvements ( not necessarily in writing ). One says that it's more important to maximize your strengths. By maximizing what you excel at, you gain a greater chance to succeed. If you work on your talents you can go from being 1 in 1,000 to maybe 1 in 100. The idea behind this method of success is that if you're already good at something, by improving it, you will stand that much further above the crowd.

The other says to work on your weaknesses. By limiting or eliminating your weaknesses you make yourself stronger. Weaknesses can lower the quality of your work, so when you limit them or remove them, that quality will become much better for it.

I think a writer should use both methods in order to improve. Burn the candle at both ends.

Find what you excel at: characters, description, plotting, world-building, etc. and make the most of it. Find ways to make what you are good at, even better. Make your characters the most true to life, or complex, or realistic, or most sympathetic. Make your description dazzle, your plotting sizzle, or your world-building awesome. Focus on that strength, build it, improve it until people start to comment on it consistently, until what you’re good at starts standing above or equal to the best. "Wow! You write the most believable characters." or "Your world-building made me feel like this place really existed."

 However, don't just work on your strengths. Steadily nibble away at your weaknesses until they are gone or marginalized. Study, improve, and learn. Pick an area you do not excel at and bring that skill level up. Find out how to make your characters real, or your plot fast paced, your world-building out of this world, or your description pretty good. You do not need to excel at these areas just yet ( but maybe one day ). You just need to make it so that people will not notice them as easily.

 If you try this approach, your rejections may start off as form letters. Then they might change to we like your strength, but you had too many weaknesses. Eventually you may graduate to "Wow! Nice plotting, but this one little area threw us off. Please try us again." which may morph to "We didn't like this weakness, but your strength was so good we just couldn't resist."

 If you work hard at becoming the best at your strength and not the worst at your weaknesses, people will begin to notice what you excel at, above what you’re not as good at.

Two Rules: If you love to write--write. If you want to be published--improve.

Have you ever had a computer problem, one which threatened every single file, application, or piece of data you had on your computer? Maybe it was a virus, or the computer simply failed due to age, or you erased something you later realized you needed.

Either way, the data that was saved was corrupt or no longer attainable. A good back up plan can help get rid of the panic when disaster strikes and years of work are on the line.

Creating a backup routine can save your life.

There are various ways to backup your system, but the best routines create multiple levels of redundancy in order to avoid problems.

( Read more... )

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What methods do you use to make sure you do not lose your work? Is there anything you can add that might be affective for backing up your data?
 

Awards/Nominations:

jennifer_brozek nominations:  Jennifer has several works that can be nominated in the Preditors & Editors Reader's Poll
 
rippatton nominate: Is eligible to be nominated for a Sir Julius Vogal Award


Published:

aliettedb  short story: "In the Age of Iron and Ashes"

ellenmillion  shared world: Torn World is live


Offers:

jongibbs received an offer: for Fur-Face; novel, urban fantasy


'09 Year End Posts:

southernweirdo  published list:  '09 stories

marshallpayne1  published list:  '09 stories

ysabetwordsmith  published list:  '09 stories

mmerriam  published list:  '09 stories


2010 Resolutions/Goals:

jennifer_brozek  resolutions/goals: Jennifer's goals

rarelytame  resolutions/goals: rarelytame's goals

jl_johnson  resolutions/goals: Jan's goals

jpsorrow  resolutions/goals: Josh's goals

sandrawickham  resolutions/goals: Sandra's goals

ebenstone  resolutions/goals: Ebenstone's goals


 

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts.

It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do.
 
It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill.

It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.

We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.”