What writing habits do you struggle with?

[E.A.Cornell]

For me I notice I tend to overuse certain words such as 'look' and 'feel'. I usually have to pick better synonyms. Another thing is that I often write super vague descriptions that I will come back to and say to myself, "What was I even thinking? I don't understand this at all like I thought I did when I wrote it." Oh, and using the same noun in three or more consecutive sentences, is another one. e.g. The cart did this. Then the cart did that. Then the cart did another thing. Then the cart... I think I made my point : )

How bout you?

 

[Lynae Fisher]

Trying to type too fast. And makeign a bazillion mistkae s ! And then having to use the backspace button a ton and still having mistake left over after 5 people have read and proofed my work. (By the way, I cheated and backspaced a few times in that second sentence, lol. Still hardly readable...

So this si wha tit lokes liek if ti don't backspace hen I writeng at hisghe speeds!

 

[E.A.Cornell]

Trying to type too fast. And makeign a bazillion mistkae s ! And then having to use the backspace button a ton and still having mistake left over after 5 people have read and proofed my work. (By the way, I cheated and backspaced a few times in that second sentence, lol. Still hardly readable...

So this si wha tit lokes liek if ti don't backspace hen I writeng at hisghe speeds!

Click to shrink...

Haha! I get that with coding sometimes. I will flip the letters in a variable. So instead of writing 'Transform' I will write something like 'Rtasform'. The compiler is very angry with me if I do that.

 

[Lynae Fisher]

Haha! I get that with coding sometimes. I will flip the letters in a variable. So instead of writing 'Transform' I will write something like 'Rtasform'. The compiler is very angry with me if I do that.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I flip letters, add ones that don't even go in the word, etc. Believe it or not, it's even worse if I try to type on a different keyboard that I'm not used to. If I slow down, that helps a lot, but sometimes I'm trying to keep up with the story as it is forming in my head...

Another problem I sometimes run into is writing things too vaguely and too fancy, so they may no sense to anyone else. Sometimes it's because I'm trying to combine two or more scene into one, so if you don't already know the scenes, it just sounds like a jumbled mess. Other times I'm trying to fictionalize and disguise a real story into a safely unrecognizable fiction story.

 

[Westee]

I have several.

I had a short story critiqued the other day, and she pointed out several unnecessary "that"s. The problem is that I use it in my everyday speech, so it's only natural to include it in my writing (see what I did there?). About 95% of them aren't needed, including ^ that one.

Since I read through my stories umpteen times, I do a lot of editing on the fly. Often, while rewriting a sentence, I click to the left of a period and then backspace through the part I want to change. However, when I finish typing the new ending of the sentence, I end it with a period and don't notice that I now have two periods.

I also have a problem with missing quotation marks, either front or back. I can't figure out why I mess that up. It's very annoying.

 

[P.M. Turner]

Uhhh, is the habit of NOT writing considered a bad writing habit?

Okay, okay. I'd say my main problem is in my descriptions, or lack thereof. When describing a new place or setting, I often skip putting in the effort to make it important or convincing, and just go straight to the dialogue, because that's the writing I actually care about. And then I read something else, some piece of writing that does description very well, and I realize, "Oh. That's probably what's missing from my work."

 

[H. E. Willis]

I think one writing-related habit is going to look something up then getting lost in Alice’s rabbit hole. One thing leads to another, then another, then I suddenly find I’ve wasted half an hour. But that’s when I’m editing, because I write longhand.

I don’t know if this is really a bad writing habit or not (frankly I don’t know what it is), but when I’m writing a book, I’ll suddenly feel like every word I use is wrong, and everything is awkward for a chapter or two. It’s like I forget how to write. Does anyone else ever have that problem?