What Are The Areas In Which You Think You Need To Improve As A Composer?

I find it hard to accurately track my own progress as a composer, but the main thing I've improved on I think is that I use less repetition. I used to do bars and bars of repeats, but I've cut back on that, which is a very good thing in my case. I'm getting better with setting atmospheres and balancing, and I'm also using more and more different style influences in my music.

I personally want to improve

1. Development. I can generally write melodies and tie them together but developing them and taking them in different, alternative directions is a struggle.

2. Finishing works.

3. Counterpoint

EVERYTHING.

Things I have improved upon:

- Understanding how to work within a DAW.

- Pin pointing areas in my tracks that need more/less.

- Patience.

Things I need to improve:

- Stick to what story/picture I have in my head and try to stay with that setting (as pointed out to me on this forum, thanks!).

- Getting themes in my head out into notes.

- Finding more effective thematic material.

- Chamber/Baroque pieces (not sure how to go about writing them).

- What chords can be written to make a more effective movement.

- Mastering and Mixing.

Alright, let's see!

1) Write more music!

2) Improve my ability to figure out what the next part of my piece of music "should" be. I've put so many pieces on hold because I complete a section to a high level of quality. I'll sometimes have no idea how to continue that level of quality for the remainder of a piece while remaining tight and coherent. So often, I try to continue a piece, the new section doesn't flow or fit quite right, I"ll toss it and try again..repeat for a couple of days...then walk away, intending to come back to it later. I rarely actually do.

3) Figure out a way to better explain the type of music that I like to right. Oftentimes the best description I can come up with is "soundtrack, minus the soundtrack part since it's not written to accompany anything". A lot of my music is written to "accompany" or otherwise expand on a simple concept or "story" in my mind, which has no presence anywhere else. The listener doesn't need to know the origin of this idea or anything about it in order to understand the music, as the music is written to be listened to on its own. The music tends to take on the life and style of some soundtrack-style music, especially video game soundtracks. This concept really confuses people in my experience, and people usually just describe it as whatever genre is most closely resembles to them: If it has orchestral instruments, they'll call it "classical", etc. Even though my music sounds nothing like the music of the Great composers of the past. It's not intending to. I'm not that kind of composer.