Strengths and Weaknesses

Aside from goals, it is important to understand my strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Since I don't think too positively about my writing skills, it is difficult for me to determine my strengths and weaknesses. It seems as if I only have weaknesses. However, it is important to know what my strengths and weaknesses are so that I know what skills I need to improve on and what I can use to my advantage in my writing. As a result, I decided to create a list of both that I can look back at when feeling lost in my writing. 

Strengths

1) I am good at organizing a schedule/outline. Normally I start with finding all my sources and then picking out all of my quotes before I really decide what I want to write about. This helps me with writing my essays because I am able to more easily pick the path I want to go on. It also allows for me to have a way to start my essay when I am completely clueless about what I want to write about.  

2) I am really good at writing under a time crunch. I know this really isn't a strength because it means that I procrastinate, but when I feel a sense of urgency, I seem to get some kind of inspiration and able to write more. 

3) I write a lot. This can also be seen like a weakness because too much writing normally means that there's most likely a lot of repetition. However, I like that I write a lot because I'm able to shorten my writing after I write everything; I think it is easier to cut than to add.  

Weaknesses

1) I am bad at finding sources. I think this is what takes the longest time for me. I always struggle to find my sources regardless of what my topic is. I think this is a weakness for me because whenever I can't find my sources, I settle with sources that aren't very great for my writing or I become discouraged to write and simply stop writing my draft. 

2) I think that my vocabulary is not very great. A lot of the times, I use the same words. I should try to use a thesaurus to find different words to enhance my vocabulary and make my writing more engaging. 

3) My sentence structure is too similar. When I don't pay attention, I tend to use the same sentence structure. I struggled with this throughout my years in writing. I think I really need to pay attention to this because I've heard that using the same sentence structure makes a writing boring.  

4) My organization in my papers isn't necessarily the best. When I organize it one way in my head or on paper, it turns out different in my actual writing. It's almost as if I'm not able to express myself the way I want to. This is a huge struggle for me because I become extremely frustrated when I'm not able to express my fully. I tend to start over everything, which sometimes is a huge waste of time, or I have to settle for a final draft that I'm not completely satisfied with. 

I have even more strengths and weaknesses, but these are the top 3-4 that I want to focus on. I think it's better to start narrow so that I have a few that I want to highlight and work on before branching out to the other points.