Combine your weaknesses and your strengths to achieve your byline

What is your favourite part of the writing process?

For me, it’s not just about the writing. The creative process, the research, the angle and the interview are all part of the feature writing process. I love the research, but I also enjoy the writing process. The interview can often lead to the angle you wish to take.

Strangely, interviewing folk has never been my favourite pastime, but it is a necessary one. I have interviewed many of the world’s leading tennis players, several politicians, West End actors and a couple of the music industry’s biggest names, but – apart from the joy and privilege of meeting these household names – it wasn’t really what excited me about the feature writing process.

I enjoyed learning from these champions in their field, and then writing about them, but the interviews were no more than the means to a good end product. Of course, however, I did my utmost to do them well.

Sounds weird doesn’t it? But that is how it was for me.

What about you?

I wonder, what is your favourite part of the process? Or your least favourite? Once you discover those within the feature writing process, you can start to learn to love the process itself.

Knowing your weaknesses and your strengths can help you on your feature writing journey. And by combining all the ingredients (those which you like and those which you don’t) to create a great feature, you will become a worthy recipient of the byline that bears your name on publication.