1. Not Writing Regularly
You need to produce. Writing is both an art and a skill. The more you write, the better you get at writing. This applies to any activity -- you need to practice.
Writing more has another benefit: it builds your writing muscles.
When you first start writing, it might take you a couple of hours to write a simple web article of 400 words. What you've been writing for a while you can do the same thing in around half an hour.
However, while writing for clients is all very well, you also need to be able to access your creativity at will, and over some 30 years of writing, I've discovered that if I don't write purely for myself for some of my writing time, my creativity suffers.
You're most creative when you're having fun, and some client work tends to rank pretty low on the fun scale.
You need to have some writing of your own, in addition to the writing you work on for clients. What can YOU write for fun? (I write blogs and websites.)
Write every day. If you're writing full-time, you need to spend at least three to four hours a day writing. If you're writing part-time, you'll need to spend at least two hours a day writing.
2. Embracing Perfection
Perfectionism lives in your left brain. It makes you over-think your writing.
Perfectionism can't coexist with creativity, which is a right brain activity.
Yes, you need to "perfect" your writing. You need edit, and revise. However, separate your writing from your revision and editing; ideally edit a project some time after you've written it. If I'm writing for a client for example, I like to leave at least four days between the writing and editing process, so I can look at what I've written more objectively.
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