Top 3 Mistakes to Avoid as a New Writer
Learn from My First Year of Writing and Start Strong
As you might have read in one of my previous articles, I am about to celebrate my first anniversary in the world of writing.
Looking back on this year, I can see how far I’ve come since publishing my first piece. This reflection led me to ask myself: what could I have done differently to optimize my journey?
Since we can’t change the past and it becomes part of our story, I’ve identified 3 issues I encountered at the beginning of my writing journey that I’d like to share with you in this article.
The goal? If you’re just starting out, this might help you avoid the same pitfalls I faced.
Waiting for Perfection Before Starting
The first thing I regret, which I’ve already mentioned in my article reflecting on my first year of writing, is simply not starting earlier.
After all, it’s natural to want to refine what comes out of our heads before presenting it to the public and to offer quality content to our readers.
In my case, however, I realize that the pursuit of perfection was actually an excuse to justify my fear of being judged. Worse, this fear made me abandon projects that I was passionate about simply because “it’s not good enough.”
When I published my first texts, I was mostly blown away by the kindness of the writing community, the practical advice for improvement, and the immense learning that comes from becoming an active member of this community.
I would be lying if I said that exposing oneself publicly does not involve the risk of receiving criticism. However, while a famous saying goes that you can’t please everyone, another says that criticism helps us grow.
*And the greatest successes often involve a degree of risk in all fields*.
Being Too Scattered
For me, this is a direct consequence of opening Pandora’s box by sharing your writings with the outside world.
Well, okay, it’s a bit nicer than the mythological object in question.
The beginnings always have something magical, you know, when you manage to overcome your fears in a certain way and see that they were unfounded.
Personally, being a hyperactive creative, my mind often tends to go in several directions, especially when my need for validation is met. Filled with this confidence, seeing that what I was writing was likely to please, I wanted to share everything that was in my head.
I started one book, then another, wrote other ideas in a notebook, started pieces of texts on my computer, a beginning of an article here, another beginning there. Now, I find myself with a mountain of ideas…
“Great!” you might say. Except that writing a dark romance or articles on personal coaching, to name just two examples, requires different cognitive resources. The most important and the hardest for me is connecting with what I write. That’s why jumping from one subject to another or from one category to another can be very mentally exhausting.
While it’s good to adopt some versatility, I regret not having better structured my work, even for ideas that I like and that are now on standby despite being well started.
Moreover, if you are active and publish on different platforms, being too scattered can harm your identity or network, as you will not be able to produce enough content to maintain your audience.
Also, your niche might be too dispersed if you go in too many directions. (Fortunately, in this case, Medium is synonymous with versatility!)
Neglecting a Plan
At the beginning, I wrote as I felt and as I wanted. Fair enough, you might say, since I was writing for my pleasure.
However, even though I still write for pleasure, I now also have a strong intention to make my writings known beyond my circle of friends and family — who are not always the best advisors or the most impartial.
Becoming active on different platforms and having several projects in progress, I quickly felt overwhelmed by everything I had started. That’s why it became essential to have a good overview of my various projects and, rapidly, to develop a methodological strategy to better structure my work, be more efficient, limit stress, and continue feeding my networks with quality content — or at least I hope so!
What works well for me is first having a checklist of my different requirements: networking, writing articles and book chapters in progress, editing, publication.
By clearly defining my needs, I was able to adapt a realistic plan in the form of a table, assigning myself tasks every day, balancing them with achievable goals, and above all, ensuring that I continue to enjoy writing.
Additionally, if you are more into writing novels, having a plan on hand with information you add as you go can be very useful. Believe me, characters and small details accumulate very quickly, and I’ve had to reread some of my writings several times to know the exact information.
Conclusion
The best advice I can give you is to get started and adapt your strategy to your aspirations, especially if you want to develop your activity in any way.
It may seem paradoxical, but if I tell you to jump in without hesitation, I also advise you to be careful not to fall into the opposite hyperactivity.
Give yourself time to learn, make mistakes, and adjust as you go. Writing can be a large-scale job, both in terms of regularity and content, which is why having a plan to achieve realistic goals and avoid being too scattered will help you manage this thirst for writing that arises as you open the floodgates.
What did you think of this article? And you, what difficulties and advice would you like to highlight in the comments section?
Thanks for reading.
Thank you for this. I can relate! I’ve always been a “writer” but too afraid to put out anything I’ve written to the public. I have also had too many ideas I want to convey and struggle to pick a direction. Appreciate all of your thoughts!