Wow, I had real problems with that first one for years, but finally got it licked. The other four though were never a real issue with me. My two biggest issues were overusing words, or one particular word too many times, such as the word "nodded", and also over explaining things. Being of a technical mindset, in my early days of writing I'd spend half a chapter explaining something that only needed about a 2-3 sentence overview. Eventually I took the latter issue and applied the rule of "if they don't need to know it, I'm not explaining it, period." The first one, the problem of excessively repeating words, was solved by putting together a rule in my head that no words, unless absolutely critical to grammar, can be reused in any sentence or piece of dialog for at least 3-5 sentences. So if I used the word "nodded", to go back to an earlier example, I couldn't use it again for at least 3-5 sentences, or in some cases I even restrict myself to not using it again for the entire page, unless absolutely needed. Oddly enough, those two rules have actually helped improve my writing by forcing me to be creative by leaving no room to be lazy.
