There's an old adage: You must focus on your weaknesses in order to improve them.
It took me years before I learned that this is generally one of the stupidest ideas ever put forth.
Okay, let's look at an example. You're a pianist. You have a weak run when driving downscale to your left pinkie. You need to work on that. That's not working on your weakness. Your strength is being a pianist and you should fix that run. Your weakness is that you've always had asthma and allergies and working on your tuba playing just because that is a weakness would be a total waste of time.
Yet we are time and time again told to work on our weaknesses.
Do I have weaknesses in my writing? Absolutely! Do I work on them hard? Absolutely! (Though I'll answer that differently in a moment, but for now...Absolutely!) But my overall strength is writing. I didn't come to fiction until my mid-thirties, and I sucked at it early on. However, I've always been a strong writer of science papers, essays, program proposals, operations manuals, and a wide variety of other things. I love playing in the land of the written word. I needed to work on my "fiction" weakness within my "writing" strength.
LEANING INTO THE WEAKNESS
By identifying writing as my strength, I can finally let go of the years and years I spent attempting to create music.- 6 years of piano lessons (and several years working on my own on a Fender Rhodes that I never played well)
- 6 years in the high school percussion section
- 20+ years playing guitar (including a lovely 12-string Martin that I still miss on occasion)
- 4 years of operatic vocal production
- flute
- fiddle
- banjo
- penny whistle
- 4 different harmonicas (good ones, including the neck holder so I could play them (very poorly) along with my guitar)
- I became a sound designer and performance tech for live theater for several years and apprenticed myself to two of the leading sound engineers in the Pacific Northwest.
- ...you get the idea
When I was a kid, my parents started my piano lessons by setting a double gin and tonic in front of the teacher. I was finally thrown out of high school band when they realized that I couldn't keep time. My songwriting group was always puzzled by my cool lyrics (writing words, duh!) and my off-key singing. The opera voice coach...
Let's just say that I had lots and lots of passion but had neither innate talent nor any particularly trainable skill. Actually, it turns out that, like my mother, I'm fairly tone deaf.
As a kid, I also desperately wanted to be a pilot. I got my private-pilot license and was well on my way to my commercial ticket when it was discovered that I was partially color blind. Not enough to be unsafe to fly, but enough that I'd probably never get a chance to fly the big jets that so fascinated me. I could have stuck with it and somehow made it work. Maybe.
I've met tone deaf musicians, who've learned by rote how each note should feel when they sing. I've met a theater lighting designer and painter who was completely colorblind. They both firmly believed that no weakness should defeat them. The results were occasionally...curious.
LEANING INTO THE STRENGTH
Back to my writing. Do I have weaknesses? Sure. Setting is a major challenge for me that I still fight against. My writing will never have the lush wonder of James Lee Burke where you want to shower off the New Orleans swamp after he takes you there for murder. So I work on my setting, but even though it is a weakness inside my overall strength, it isn't where most of my attention goes.
I've learned over the last 25 years and 6 million words what some of my core strengths are. Two of them are: relatable characters and pacing. It is by focusing on my core strengths that I created my most popular characters:
- Emily Beale of the Night Stalkers secret helicopter regiment as she rode rough-shod through over 35 military romantic suspense titles.
- And now, Miranda Chase, the high-functioning autistic, air-crash savant who is fighting to be normal...and to stop the next war from erupting.
Relatable characters and pacing. I've proven to myself that I am an action-adventure writer, whether in romance, science fiction, or technothrillers. (At least so far. Who knows what the future will bring.)
But I didn't achieve my success to date by leaning into my weaknesses. If I had, you'd have okay setting, some more sensory details, and even more dialogue (though my years working in live theater helped make that last one probably tip over from a weakness to a moderate strength--still, something I do try to improve over time). But you'd probably not have a very exciting read.
Instead, I study my strengths of pacing and character like a rabid dog. Well, okay, like a fascinated writer, but still. Those are my strengths and I'm always studying how to play better to them.
Instead, I study my strengths of pacing and character like a rabid dog. Well, okay, like a fascinated writer, but still. Those are my strengths and I'm always studying how to play better to them.
MANAGING YOUR INNER WRITER
Ages ago (about 7 years), I co-wrote a book with my sister (a visual artist--photography):
One of the things we talked about was how to focus on success and strength rather than weakness.
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| Managing Your Inner Artist/Writer |
One one of the most important points for me in the whole book is this simple little diagram of the most basic elements of a project plan.
- People who never start a project, well, they never got anything done.
- Some folks are great at starting them, but need someone else to actually do them or them never really move along.
- Others are dynamos at Starting and Doing, but can never quite let go and finish. (If you're on the 9th major revision of your book, or even the 3rd, I'm looking at you!)
- And my own greatest failing? I SUCKED (note the semi-victorious past tense) at acknowledging and celebrating my achievements (I'm still working on it--hard). Yet, this is where you get self-confidence and the energy to start the next project. (Folks weak in this area are the ones who burn out because they go straight from finishing one project into the fast churn of starting the next. Trust me, I know. If you doubt that, just read this book.)
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| Mid-life Crisis On Wheels |
WE MUST CELEBRATE OUR SUCCESSES!
For me? Here are two hot examples:
One: Just a few steps from my writing desk is my brag shelf. I can't tell you how many times I stop and stand there to just stare in wonder at what I've created over the last 25 years of work. This shelf started out as 20 author copies of my first book in 1997. But now? Well, I've done a lot of writing since then.
Two: Just yesterday I published a new collection of short stories.
These five stories were written between 2016 and 2018. But I didn't just pack these stories together. I took the time to go back and read each one. To remember, with joy, the creation of each tale and all those cool characters. I wrote brand-new introductions to each story about why they were important to me then, and why some of them are surprisingly important to me now.
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| The Complete Night Stalkers 5E Stories |
And for me, "Celebration" is definitely a key weakness that I've turned into a strength.
USA
Today and Amazon #1 Bestseller M. L. Buchman has 60+ novels, 100 short stories,
and lotsa audiobooks. Booklist says: 3x “Top 10 Romance of the Year.” PW says “Tom
Clancy fans open to a strong female lead will clamor for more.” A
project manager with a geophysics degree, he’s flown and jumped out of planes
and also bicycled solo around the world.
