Unlocking Your Creative Potential

One of the most difficult things about writing is first and foremost finding the inspiration to write. Another thing that contributes to the challenge of writing is accessing worthy ideas. Many people may have broad vocabularies, and be inspired to write, but cannot access any "worthy ideas", which is in-turn holding them back, and keeping them from writing the "masterpiece" they would otherwise be capable of writing.

Since words form the soul of writing, it is integral that we select our words meticulously. One wrong choice of words can make the difference between an excellent piece of writing and a mediocre piece of writing. Not only is word choice and variety important but in academic writing you cannot use colloquialisms, profanities or abbreviations. Because of "technology", students have become more accustomed to using e-talk and simple more conversational forms of language, and it is second nature to them, a habit that must be broken when writing formal English.

Once you've found "les mots justes", it remains to combine them in a variety of ways, using the correct punctuation and word order so that your ideas flow and connect. You're writing must also be organized, follow some sort of order, and have formal structure to first of all make sense. A major problem students have is editing or rather the lack of editing. You may have written an exceptional piece of work, but because of poor editing or even the lack of editing, the overall quality of the work may be affected, and careless mistakes such as typos, grammatical errors, capitalization or punctuation etc., which could have otherwise been avoided, are prominent in your work.

Lastly, students have problems identifying where their problems and weaknesses are in writing. One may have painted a false and perfect image of themselves, which is holding them back from being able to improve there work, and reach their potential, because they are unwilling to admit that they make errors. As it is said, "The first step towards knowledge is to know that we are ignorant." - Richard Cecil. The only way to improve your work is to shatter this "perfect image" of yourself and to understand that everyone is human and that humans are fallible, whether one likes it or not.

Writers all experience different problems when writing but the main problems they experience are finding the inspiration to write and accessing worthy ideas. Another big problem is choosing the right words to express yourself, and using informal English such as e-talk. Lastly sentence structure and clarity, lack of editing your work and identifying where your weaknesses are, are big problems for many people when writing.