What are Your Weaknesses as a Professional Writer?

In the post "Tip #2. Know Yourself", I introduced the idea of using a SWOT analysis to look at your own Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. In that post I suggested a few things about writers' Strengths. Then, in the post "Credibility in Business and in Writing" (yesterday), I talked about assessing your own values. It doesn't make sense to work on something you're good at, if fundamentally it's also something your values don't support. For example, I may have made a really good white collar criminal, but I'll never know. You may be the world's best advertising agency copywriter, but if you don't want to live in New York City, maybe working in an agency isn't an option for you.

Image: "Me and myself: What you see is what you get (Self Deception)", by Flickr.com user jcoterhals, under Creative Commons Generic Attribution License. Thanks for sharing!

Don't Let Your Weaknesses Rule You

A great example to illustrate this point is the famous Canadian hockey player, Wayne Gretzky. A fast and graceful skater, Gretzky could be counted on to score goals and set up winning plays out on the ice. But, he was probably a terrible goal tender. How much time do you think Wayne Gretzky spent worrying about being a terrible goal tender? How often did he practice goal tending skills?

The same holds for you. You need to know what your weaknesses are, but only the ones that are relevant to what you want to do, and that are serious enough to possibly harm you. Identify those weaknesses and minimize the risk of letting them hurt you.

Typical Weaknesses of Freelance Writers

You can come up with your own personal list of weaknesses, and write them in your SWOT matrix chart. Here are some ideas to help you. Only write down things that really apply to you in the work you want to do. Only write down things that could have a serious negative impact. Ideas:

- I'm never on time when working to a deadline;
- I don't have any contacts in the area I want to write about;
- I don't have enough money to go two months without work;
- I don't speak English and I want to write in English language publications;
- My speling is terible

and so on.

Often times, the weaknesses look a lot like strengths, just in the negative sense. That's OK. One person's strength will be another's weakness.

After you have identified the relevant and important weaknesses for yourself, take a look at the list, and narrow it down. Don't keep a lot on there. Just the ones that really matter.

Your job will be to come up with techniques for making sure those weaknesses don't hurt you. You probably have some ideas right now. Go ahead and make a note of them while it's fresh in your mind.

Next, we'll look at the Opportunities and Threats facing you as a freelance writer.