The Biggest Mistake a Writer Can Make

I wonder what is the biggest mistake in writing you can make?  I think that this is a question about fear, for me, as well.  I don’t like making mistakes… but then the mistakes happen and I have to fix them.  It is not easy going back and fixing them, and I know that we all love fancy terms, but editing is one of those technical terms, and most people don’t like to see the word edits and time in the same sentence.

So based on this commentary, what is the biggest mistake a writer can make?  I would have to say that it can affect both new writers and more experienced writers, and the mistake is not editing.

Now, the is a fine line between editing too much and editing not enough.  I used several “pre-readers” (in some cases unhappily volunteered readers) to read my book.  I kept on editing it based on their suggestions.

That was the hardest part.  Fixing my work.

Of course something that I have found is that the more I fix, the more I learn that I have to work on with my own blog and other things.  I can almost say that if I fix one more “glaring error” I can be happy. I can say that I am happy only because I know that I have done something better.

The biggest mistake is at the editing stage, but more to the point, it is the choice to publish before what you have written is worthy of being published.  I have never been so thankful that Jane is as passionate about editing as I am about writing.

I know that when sometimes all you want is to just publish that book, you might want to stop for a moment and figure out that it is a lot harder to do this.  You need to take a deep breath, work hard, and simply take it one step at a time.

Something that might take a week might stretch out to a month, but take each day one step at a time.  It does become a published book…  As long as you don’t make a big mistake.