A New Bloom

Well hey!I’m late on the Question of the Week. Sort of. It’s still this week so technically I am not late. Just later than when I usually write.Anyway … This week’s topic is sort of opposite to last week’s, where we discussed our writing superpower. Now we’ve been called on to give up the Kryptonite:What is your writing weakness?Can you hear crickets?

What is this weakness business you speak of?

You might be asking your writer self: Why do we need to discuss weaknesses? After all, didn’t we just get through talking about our incredible prowess with the pen (pencil, keyboard, finger in sand, chalk)? We did. But as our ever intrepid DIYMFA maven shared in her post this week, we may be called upon to work from our place of weakness so we best know what it is.Discovering it may not be the easiest thing. For some, it might be a genre deficiency: do you always use the same tropes or can’t mix up the scene?For others of us (read: me), it’s related to genre deficiency. Perhaps genre overindulgence is the best way to term it. So, let’s go to Writer’s Anonymous together for a moment, shall we?Hi, my name is Andree and I enjoy speculative and science fiction.

Crowd: Hi, Andree!

I sometimes think that I can write a story (or on occasion longer piece) in other genres with as much ease as I write in my own. That may be a good exercise but when I feel bold enough to want to publish such tales, that’s where the Kryptonite shows. And then I have a nerve to get sad or disappointed when it doesn’t pass muster for publication. Sigh.

Crowd: Thank you for sharing. We’ve all been there and now that you recognize your problem, you can learn from it.

And there it is: we have to learn about our Kryptonite and figure how it works into our Superpower. I am learning (trying?) to mix genres as a start.What is your writing weakness and how have you learned from it? How do you use it for good?