A List of the Worst Writing Mistakes Can Make You a Success


by Jurgen Wolff - Date: 2007-01-03 - Word Count: 283 Share This!

Marketing guru Sean D' Souza suggests that brave companies and individuals try the 180-degree (opposite) exercise, and it works for writers, too. Instead of asking "How could I build up my business (or relationship, or health, or anything else)," D'Souza suggests, try asking "How could I destroy it?" Make a list.

For a company, the list might include, "make people spend endless time on hold," "have the first contact with our company be with an unfriendly or untrained person," and "make sure people have no easy way to contact you if they're unhappy." For a relationship, it might be, "remember to criticize, but forget to praise," "have time for everything but this person," and "never tell the person how much they mean to you."

Applying this to writing a non-fiction book, the list might include, "make it boring," "don't add any new information," and "take a long time to get to the meat of the information."

For a novel, some items might be, "Take a long time before the story actually starts," "write long and boring descriptions," and "don't tie up all the strands of the story."

The shock comes when people realize that they are actually doing many of the things on their list! And the additional use of the list is that you can go down it and make sure you are doing the opposite of each item.

ACTION: Try doing the 180-degree exercise for whatever you are writing. Make the list first, then consider whether you're doing any of these. As a second step, consider the opposite of each item and make sure you are doing that. When you're doing the opposite of every item on the list, your chances of writing success improve astronomically.


Related Tags: articles, writing, success, write, authors, creativity, writer, novels, flow, authorship, ;short stories

Jurgen Wolff has written more than 100 episodes of television, six non-fiction books, short stories, articles, and plays. He is also an international creativity and writing coach. More tips and techniques are available at his website: http://www.timetowrite.com, where you can also sign up for his free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin. Also see his blog at http://www.timetowrite.blogs.com.

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