Hey everyone! It’s Clara Kensie, back with a new Question of the Week! Pretty much the only thing writers love as much as writing is talking about writing. So each week here at Adventures in YA Publishing, I post a question for you to answer. The questions cover all topics important to writers: craft, career, writers’ life, reading and books. Together we’ll become better writers by sharing tips and discussing our habits and practices.

Question of the Week: What is your worst writing habit? photo credit: richardquerrey via photopin cc

My worst writing habit is probably spending too much time writing emails. I hate to send anything to anyone that isn’t perfectly composed and formatted. That’s a good habit to have when emailing my agent and editor. But I spend waaaayyyy too long perfecting emails to my friends. My friends won’t care if I have a typo, or if my sentences and paragraphs aren’t perfectly composed. Sometimes after I’ve sent my friends an email that I’ve spent forever writing, editing, and revising, I realize how much time I’ve just wasted. All that time perfecting an email to my friends, when I could have—should have—dashed it off in seconds, and used the rest of that time for writing my manuscripts. This is a habit I’ve been been trying to change for years now.

What about you? Are you too easily distracted by social media? Do you spend so much time reading that you never write? Do you start plenty of manuscripts but never finish any of them? What is your worst writing habit?