My Biggest Weakness: Finding My Literary Kryptonite

How many of us have sat in front of our latest piece of writing, squinting and mumbling to ourselves because, no matter how hard we've tried, there's still something wrong with it? It can be incredibly aggravating when, as a writer, you know there is an issue with your writing, but you can't for the life of you figure out what it is.

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Trust me, we have all been there. But until we can jump over that hurdle, realizing our own weaknesses, we will all, inevitably, continue to flounder.

The Denial Stage

If you're lucky, there will be people in your life willing to tell you where you struggle. At times, this may feel like a personal attack, though. My mother's been telling me for years that I need to be more descriptive in my writing. For the longest time, I waved that suggestion off. Writing is different now, I thought. People don't need to describe every minute detail to get their points across.

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I was aware, at the time, that I absolutely despised overly-descriptive language. Wading through long descriptions was never something I enjoyed. However, trying to avoid being too descriptive, I avoided description altogether. The results, it turned out, were pieces of prose that were good, but they had a fatal flaw.

Starting to See the Light

Just this semester, I enrolled in an Advanced Creative Nonfiction course. My professor, as it turns out, is a stickler for descriptions. In class, we started doing exercise after exercise on how to make intensely descriptive passages. She's taught us how to turn "the woman had a car" into "the woman drove up in her shiny, pink Corvette. The top was down, and her hair was blowing behind her in the wind." Noticing how well I could picture such scenes, I started to wonder if my previous hatred of description was misled.

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The Second Opinion

Around the same time, I received a rejection from a literary magazine that I'd submitted to. Rejections, in this line of work, are kind of the norm. When you get one, it's easy to just chalk it up to another person who just doesn't "get" your work. This magazine, however, provided me with feedback. And you know what they said? One reviewer remarked, "I think the writing is fine because her ideas are clearly expressed, but I didn't like that I couldn't 'see' or imagine the essay more." Another said, "The essay doesn't grip me because it is missing the particularity of what it's trying to convey." Overwhelmingly, all my reviewers mentioned something about the lack of descriptions or "surface-level" examinations. After that, I sat down, contemplated their comments, and realized, "Well, shoot, my mom was right." Which, dang, no one ever wants to admit that, do they?

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The magazine, by the way, was Under the Sun. I particularly appreciated their in-depth feedback. So, if you're looking for a place to submit creative nonfiction, give them a shot!

Where Did I Go From There?

It was all fine and dandy that I'd managed to find what had been holding me back, but then I wondered, Where do I go from here? It felt like such an impossible feat. Yes, I'd found my weakness, but there wasn't some magical switch I could flip that would make my work light up with ✨ description ✨. And if I thought finding the problem was hard, boy, was I in for a RUDE awakening.

As it turned out, my go-to to fix descriptions was to be as painfully surface-level as possible. Take this excerpt from a former short story of mine, for example.

Oh, wait, what was that little comment in the corner? The one that a classmate of mine made on this very passage?

Wait, so now there was a fourth person telling me my descriptions needed some work? Yeah, that was it. I couldn't deny the problem anymore. Faced with the situation in this particular passage, I sat down, closed my eyes, and tried to picture myself in this sort of relationship. What moments would make me more attached to a person? What moments would make me view a relationship as "perfect"?

Isn't that better? Sure, it could still use a bit of work, but it at least can stand on its own. Throughout the course of this piece, I continued to follow this same formula, examining it for places to deepen the descriptions. The result was a piece that was a total of seven pages longer and one that I no longer felt indifferent to. I'm actually proud of it now. Who would've thought?

The Bottom Line

I still have a long way to go in my descriptive journey, but now I at least have a place to start. Knowing where to find my problems, I have created a map for myself—an X to mark the spot. Now, I can take the time to analyze my pieces through a descriptive eye, looking for places to enrich them with details. Just take a look at how well my introduction to this story turned out:

(Hey, literary magazines, isn't this something you want to pick up? Please?)

The bottom line is this: It'll be hard. At times, you'll want to revert back to the old, easier way of doing things. If you keep at it, though, I am confident that you, and I as well, will be able to overcome our literary weaknesses. Together, we can become immune to each of our literary kryptonites.

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