From Neverwhere, American Gods, Stardust and more, Neil Gaiman’s humour, characters, and imagination never fail to amaze me. In the midst of a week of major life changes and the whispers of insidious self-doubt, his inspirational commencement speech at the University of the Arts was just what I needed. Every artist, writer, singer, dancer, painter, should take a minute to watch and be inspired to make good art. It’s that simple. Never forget that’s what we do. Make good art.I hope you all enjoy.
Your Writer’s Image
There have been a lot of these images going around Facebook lately. This one about writers is one of my favorites (along with the one about moms with Victoria Beckham, soccer ball on hip). How does society view you? How does your mom view you? But, of course, the real question is, how you do view yourself? What is your writer’s image?
Whenever I read a book, I always like to image the author as she typed the words I’m currently reading. Of course, even though I am a writer, I never imagine all the mistakes and rewrites and edits. I always seem to imagine the author holed up in a dark room, madly typing the words exactly as they are on the page in my hand. I’m sure the author would laugh hysterically if I ever told her this. Maybe she’d be flattered (I sure would).
When it comes to my own writer’s image, it’s not quite so inspiring. I try to imagine myself outside or near a window with my laptop on a cute little wooden desk, sitting in the perfect typing position, characters dancing in my head, writing away. In reality, I’m usually half passed out in bed with one eye watching the latest episode of Supernatural and a half a click away from Facebook (where I come across funny pictures that make me ponder life’s questions).
As I type this (on my phone) I’m in the car driving from Arizona to Colorado, where I will be living in a couple of days. That’s what got me thinking about it. Where I lived up until today, there wasn’t much for writers, but when moving to a bigger city, my first thought was, “How many writer’s groups are there?” I was thrilled to find out a large group and yearly conference was just outside my new doorstep.
Local writing groups are my guilty pleasure. Being a part of a professional, focused bunch of peers makes me feel more professional and focused myself. Attending meetings and mingling with other hardworking writers somehow begins to change my image of my writerly self. Suddenly I see myself more like the writer I dream of being, which subconsciously leads me into being more like that writer in real life. Motivated. Awaited. Confident. Inspired.
We all know there’s no such thing as the writer who leads the uninterrupted, perfect writing life we like to image, but doing what it takes to create a healthier writer’s image of yourself gets us just a little bit closer.
How do you view yourself as a writer? What inspires you to be more like the writer you want to be?
What’s Your Story?
This blog post is going to be a little…unconventional. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve taken some really great trainings (at my day job), and the tools and information I’ve learned has been so valuable that I thought I’d post a mini recap here.
One of the trainings I took was called Crucial Confrontations taught by Vital Smarts. How do you know if a confrontation is crucial? Well, if the emotions are high and the stakes are high, you probably have yourself a crucial confrontation. But, it’s up to you to decide if you want to have a confrontation or not. If something is really bothering you, then I highly encourage it. The results may really surprise you.
The biggest takeaway for me was whenever someone does something like violates your trust, your friendship, or disrespects you, as humans, we immediately come up with a story in our mind about why they did what they did. What was their motivation? Well, as writers, we can come up with some elaborate stories. And they are just that. Stories.
Lets use an example. Say you ask someone to critique your work. You specifically ask for feedback. The person comes back with some comments that aren’t exactly off the mark, but they are written in a way that kind of hurts your feelings. You start to think this person doesn’t know what they’re talking about. They don’t “get” your story. In some instances this may be right, but what we’re doing is telling ourselves a story. This story creates an emotion, and we become defensive. We no longer care about the true meaning behind the words, we come up with all kinds of assumptions as to why this person said what they said. As an editor, critiquer, and writer, I try to always be respectful and mindful of what I write in a critique. I’m sure we all do. But after you’ve read a story a lot, and you get familiar with it and the characters, it’s easy to just jot comments here and there that may be blunt. We don’t mean for them to be hurtful, but it’s text. There’s no way to decipher the person’s tone or body language.
I’m not saying we all do this, and I know we all try hard not to, but it’s something that can happen regardless of our intentions. The best thing to do is be aware of the stories we tell ourselves–they’re NOT fact. You don’t know what the person meant because you haven’t asked them yet. You haven’t had a chance to get over your own assumptions.
Here’s another example. Say someone says something that hurts your feelings, but instead of going to them and talking about it, you turn to silence. You choose not to say anything to them. Instead, you come up with a story as to why they said what they said, and you go ahead and come up with how they meant it, too. “They don’t like me. They’re just trying to get me down. They’re mean. Come to think of it, I bet they’re happy they made me feel bad.” That’s a story–assumptions. Take a second to come up with a scenario in your mind. When’s the last time someone said something to you that upset you? What did you do about it? Did you think of the facts? Or come up with your own? It’s so so so easy to do. I didn’t realize how often I did it unit this training.
Talk to the person who upset you. Don’t attack them. Instead, create a safe environment for them to open up to you. Say things like, “I don’t want this to create a problem for us, and I do want us to be able to talk about this so we can move on. Is that okay with you?” This creates a safe environment for the person to want to open up. It can lead to a peaceful confrontation, and hopefully you’ll both leave the conversation feeling better. That’s the goal.
So next time someone says something to you that hurts your feelings, instead of coming up with a story, stop. Try to think about it objectively and with a clean slate.
Rewrites, I fear you not. Kind of.
This is my post about how one person can make a difference in a writer’s mindset. I have different people in my life that I know I can count on for certain things, and who play specific roles in the things I do. You guys will remember I talked about Megan, today I’m sharing somebody else with you. This time I use her real name.
I have a new friend. Her name is Cait and she lives somewhere in the US. Sometimes I think life sends us certain people when we really need them(I think I’ve mentioned this before), and two weeks ago I needed somebody to help me move forward with an aspect of my writing I honestly wasn’t looking forward to.
Rewrites.
I had to start rewrites on a novel, and it was a prospect I dread more than going to the dentist(if you know one thing about me, know that going to the dentist scares me to death. I usually start crying two days before the actual appointment).
A bit of background: A month or two ago I sent my novel to a beta reader I’ve never met before. In less than a week she sent it back with a whole lot of hard truths, all of which made the possibility of a rewrite jump to the forefront of my mind. This was something I did not welcome. A few weeks after I received her feedback, somebody else offered to read for me and although her notes were encouraging, she answered the most important question I’d sent to her with my manuscript. Do you think I need to rewrite? Her answer as a straight up, ‘Yes, I think you do’. I needed somebody to say ‘you have to rewrite’, for it to really sink in. I can be hard headed sometimes and encourage people to tell me what to do. Only in some aspects of course. Having somebody say that I need to do something as big as that was kind of like dropping the mountain that had been weighing me down for a while now. It was that weight of knowing I had to do it even though I didn’t want to.
Never let your tears and sensitivity hurt you. I found this partial quote somewhere while I wasted time digging for photos in Google images. It struck home because, yes, I am sensitive about the rewrite, this novel specifically. The week I started rewrites was also when I realized I’ve been working on this particular novel for a year. That’s ridiculously long for me. Although I know, I KNOW, that it takes months, sometimes years, to get a novel as good as it can be, I’m one of those people who want it to be finished and awesome as soon as I type THE END on the last page of the first draft. But it’s not, and I’ll spend the next few months fixing it, having it critiqued and beta read, polishing it. After all that, realizing I have to rewrite the entire things is daunting and a little heartbreaking. But it’s part of the process and now, one week later, I’ve accepted it for what it is.
Getting back to Cait. I met her on twitter a few weeks before the rewrite, she was a friend of a friend and is now my friend. But right at this moment she’s my rewrite partner as well. We’ve been at it for a week now. Each day I ask her how rewrites are going, she’ll do the same. If she’s ahead, I’ll work that bit harder to catch up and I’m sure she does the same. The moment we agreed to do this together was when I lost my dread for doing this. It’s a massive task, an emotional one as well, but knowing I didn’t have to do it on my own made such a difference. Knowing somebody is suffering through it with me makes it that much more bearable, and after a week of doing this, I actually look forward to opening the word document and doing what needs to be done.
It’s amazing the kind of difference one person can make to your mindset. I’m a proud introvert but when it comes to my writer friends, I’m blessed beyond belief. One of the best parts of my journey as a writer is the people I’ve met along the way, and that includes the ladies from Hugs and Chocolate and everybody that takes a minute or two to comment on our posts. We aren’t alone in this thing anymore, but sometimes we forget. Meeting people who go through the same things we do, they are just one of the many reminders that all we have to do is say something about what we’re experiencing with regard to our writing. Somebody will step forward to say ‘I know what it’s like, how can I help’. If that’s not your thing, there are hundreds of blog posts scattered across the internet that will inspire confidence and a willingness to work harder for what you love.
We all have ways of dealing with feeling down, mine just happen to be knowing that I’m not alone in feeling like this. This ties back to the rewrites that I don’t dread so much anymore. Of course I have a lot of other people who motivate and keep me going, but Cait seemed appropriate for this post.
So thank you, Cait, for not letting me suffer alone. And thank you to everybody who’s been so supportive here. We love you all.
The Magic of Fairy Tales
Once upon a time in a far away land…
Cliche as it is, don’t you just love stories that start with that line? I do. Fairy tales are pure magic. I grew up on the censored fairy tales, where Cinderella was rescued by a prince, Ariel found her happily ever after and Little Red Riding Hood escaped the big, bad wolf. But then I discovered the true fairy tales – the ones by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Charles Perrault and Hans Christian Anderson. Imagine my surprise when I read Aschenputtel (later known as Cinderella) by The Brothers Grimm. It certainly wasn’t the warm fuzzy tale Disney had portrayed. Can you imagine the lovely children’s movie showing the wicked step sisters cutting off parts of their feet to fit into the glass slipper only to have their eyes pecked out by pigeons so the prince will see the truth? It wouldn’t send girls to sleep with dreams of fairy godmothers and handsome princes dancing in their heads. In the original version of Little Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault, the wolf eats her in the end. And Ariel. Poor Ariel. Hans Christian Anderson must have had it in for her because he made her watch as the prince married another princess. She’s offered a knife with which to kill him, but she can’t do it. She jumps into the water and turns to froth. That was Anderson’s original story. He later reworded it and didn’t kill her by froth, just that she was waiting to go to heaven as a “daughter of the air.” Dead is dead though.
These were the fairy tales I loved. They were dark and twisted and unpleasant at times, but they made me think. Not all the stories had a happily ever after, in fact, most didn’t. To me, it made more sense that way. Life is full of ups and down and stories should be too. I recently reread Bluebeard by Perrault. It does have a happy, though warped ending. The main character doesn’t die, so it’s happy. Some days life is like that, if you make it through a certain trial and come out intact – it’s a happy ending (at least for that day).
No matter how dark and terrible the fairy tale was, there was usually a moral attached, though sometimes they were a little hard to find. In Aschenputtel, it was to treat others how you want to be treated and good will always prevail. The Little Mermaid tells us to sacrifice everything for love, even our lives and in Little Red Riding Hood it’s basic message was not to talk to strangers (in the original, she asked the wolf for directions and he gave her the wrong ones, causing her doom). Perrault often included a rhyming poem at the end of his story to help explain his idea of the moral. Here’s the one he wrote at the end of Bluebeard:
“Curiosity, in spite of its charm,
Too often causes a great deal of harm.
A thousand new cases arise each day.
With due respect, ladies, the thrill is slight,
For as soon as you’re satisfied, it goes away,
And the price one pays is never right.”
Confusing, isn’t it? If the wife hadn’t been curious she would’ve met the same fate as the other wives, yet Perrault seems to be telling us not to be curious. Given a choice, I’d rather be curious.
For a lot of people, fairy tales are introduced to us when we’re children. They’re our first experience with good and evil, fantasy and hope that good will win. What are your feelings on fairy tales? Which ones are your favorites? Have you ever written one? I’d love to try and write about a far off land, a princess and rogue prince, complete with sword fights, dragons and talking animals. Hmmmm…
The Poetic Life
There is a light inside my head.
From pale to neon
it splits, guts, and strains
the fragile fruit that is my brain.
The light inside my head is poetry. I don’t remember when I fell in love with the feel of words rolling around in my brain and the taste they made when they fell off my lips. I’ve written reams of bad poetry and I don’t foresee a day that I’ll stop trying to achieve something higher and more beautiful.
In short, poetry is my therapy. There comes a time in everyone’s life, especially a writer’s, when someone or something tries to mute the passions and the independent spirit. Poetry fights the silence. It doesn’t crave understanding; it only wants a response, often from the gut.
After I survived an abusive relationship, I was left with not only two beautiful girls to raise, but a shattered psyche to put back together. I found my old notebooks and started writing free verse again. I read aloud the works of poets like Maya Angelou, Edgar Allen Poe, and Sylvia Plath. It rekindled my love for language and as I wrote about my circumstance and emotion, I became less of a victim and more of a warrior. And it made room in my crowded heart to love and dream again.
Niamh Clune, author of Orange Petals in a Storm, says, “For me, poetry is about allowing soul into life.”
“Poetry…for me it’s about deciphering the points of light and dark, rising to my best through words and attempting to capture some fleeting image or fullness.”
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
~Socrates
For the wordsmiths, poetry can remove the blockage when we are struggling to distill an emotion or theme in a scene. It tears the blinders-frustrations and blank pages- from our third eye and reminds us why we started the thing in the first place- the love for language and its capacity to make us dance, rage, and continue forward when it appears the costs are too high.
“Always be a poet, even in prose.”
~Charles Baudelaire
Each writer’s journey is as unique as the lines on our hands and the stories we have to share. Poetry continues to be not the vehicle, but the road I dare not stray too far from. It is my hiding place when fears about talent and commitment frolic during restless nights. I know I’ll never stop distilling life into verse and there is no quieting my voice or imagination.
Does poetry, in any form, impact your writer’s journey?
The Third Perspective: Why I Love Third Person Narrative
I confess. I’m a loner, a rebel, an oddball, a rarity. That’s right world, I write Young Adult novels in third person point of view and I wouldn’t have it any other way. There. I’ve said it. You can stamp non-conformist on my forehead.
These days YA first person POV novels fly off the shelves. Teen readers can’t seem to get enough of them, agents are snapping them up, and 99% of YA writers are on the flag flying first person point of view bandwagon. In the YA world I sometimes feel like I’m seated at a table for one on Valentine’s Day. I used to sit and wonder…‘ Why are they getting all the love?’
For you third person lovers out there, it might seem like we’re a minority, but I’m here to tell you not to worry. There are still readers, agents, and editors who love third person. If I can get published writing third person, so can you.
So why have I gone all rebel? I’m not a hater. I admire those who write read and love their first person POV. At the end of the day, it’s all about the story. If the story is great, I don’t care what POV it’s written in, but I confess it’s not my favourite and it’s certainly not my voice. And that’s the crux of it. Writers should never pick a POV for trends sake. Writers should write in the POV that best serves the story.
So why do I love third? (And by third, I’m talking about third limited. I’m not going to go into omniscient here. I’m not a fan of pure omniscient nor do I write it. If any of you do, I would love to hear your thoughts on it.)
For me, third person brings a story to life in a way that firstperson doesn’t, it’s about the richness of language, the depth of the world, the exploration of emotion and conflict on a broader spectrum. It’s about diversity. It’s about seeing the world as a whole and not just through the MC’s tinted glasses. Why would I want to see one colour when I could see the whole rainbow? It’s about the butterfly effect and seeing the ripples turn into a tsunami and how that effects everyone involved.
Before you get your first person POV loving knickers in a twist, I’m not saying you can’t have rich language or depth in first person POV, but it is harder. Not unlike writing third person in the same intimate, jump into the characters head, kind of way.
A First Look:
I’ll be honest and say that to me, first person POV feels too constricting, both in writing and in reading. I feel suffocated by the single voice. Restricted in what I can know and who I can relate to. I feel as if I’m missing part of the story. Because of this, the MC’s voice has to be pretty fresh and amazing to keep me from feeling trapped and if I’m honest, sometimes bored and annoyed. The writer has to employee great dialogue and unique perspective from the MC to make me continue reading. Sometimes I feel first person can focus too much on the internal and as a consequence the MC seems more like a paper doll than a living being. Of course, this can be said of third person as well, but with third person you have other characters views and perceptions of the MC to help build her character. In first you rely solely on one personality.
First Person Done Right:
An example of single MC first person done to perfection is Libba Bray’s Great and Terrible Beauty. Gemma Doyle is by far one of my favourite YA MC’s. Libba Bray’s first person narrative is one of the only ones that made me forget I wasn’t reading in my beloved third person POV. It’s intimate and yet Gemma truly observes the world around her. The MC brings depth and richness to the world with the way she describes and interacts with it. And she’s truly three dimensional. If you’re writing in first, I highly recommend studying Libba Bray.
Another fabulous example is Maggie Stiefvater’s Wolves of Mercy Falls series. Throughout the series, Maggie uses first person POV for multiple characters. Each voice is fresh and easily distinguishable. This approach alleviates the sometimes myopic view of a singular MC first person POV and allows the reader to experience a greater breath of the story. I think she’s pure genius.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind:
Where first person explores the inside out, third tends to explore the external. In the same way that first person can be myopic, third can be too detached, too broad. It can lead to too much telling and not enough showing. It can be slow to get into the action and the character, especially when using omniscient third. But with third person limited, I think you get the best of both worlds. It gives you enough distance to not feel like you’re looking through the story through a single prism and yet intimate enough to help the reader jump into the head of the characters.
Third Person done Right:
Hands down the best writer for third person POV is George RR Martin. Pure genius. His use of third person limited puts you right in the action and in the head of his characters. I know the Lannisters, the Starks, Karstarks, Crows, Greyjoy’s, Tyrell’s, Umbers, Frey’s, ect…as well as I know my own family. They are real, you change your mind about them chapter by chapter. One minute loving Tyrion, the next despising him. You see the world working as a symbiotic being, each part being revealed through the characters reacting to one another. Third person limited allows the reader to see motives others can’t. The reader sees the whole chessboard while the characters don’t. He makes the reader hold their breath each time a piece is moved in the game of thrones as the reader anticipates what’s going to happen knowing others characters have no idea how it will affect them. I get to watch the butterfly effect take wing. To me, this builds tension in a way first person doesn’t. It allows the reader to dive in, become a part of the story, loose themselves in the world around them, and feel the grit and the blood.
Why Choose?
Of course you could even opt to use both first and third in your novel. LA Weatherly uses both in her Angel series. Her MC, Willow, speaks to the reader in first person while Alex and the evil Angels are written in third. LA Weatherly’s seamless use of both POV’s serves to bring the reader in to relate with Willow but also allows the reader a broader view. You would think this technique would be jarring, but I didn’t find it that way at all.
In the end, there is no right or wrong. What’s right for you won’t be right for another. Why does it have to be either or? Both POV’s have their strength and their weaknesses. Being aware of the weakness is the first step to getting it right. All writers must work to find the balance. Seek your voice; don’t write in a POV because you think that’s what readers/agents/editors want. Make sure you’re serving the story and the characters and let your voice shine through.
Inspirational Triggers
Last week my best friend dragged me to see The Lucky One. She insisted I had to see it (insert drooling here). While I haven’t read a Nicholas Sparks book in a long time (don’t get me started), I love the movies based off his books. Who doesn’t swoon over A Walk to Remember and The Notebook? I wasn’t sure we would make it because it was the last week the movie would be played at our theater and, well, I have a baby permanently attached to me. My friend ignored my excuses and took me (baby attached) to see it. I’m extremely glad she did and I may owe her forever. Because after the movie, I came home so inspired…I outlined half of my novel rewrite.
Publishers, prepare your offers.
Something about the movie, hit me at exactly the right time in the perfect way. I could blame it on Zac Efron (okay, maybe a little) but really, I blame it on the movie being full of the things that get my my muse’s attention. Rain, beautiful green settings, water, a gorgeous house. Not to mention a hero any woman could fall in love with (insert drooling here as well).
Lately, I’d lost track of my inspiration, especially when it came to this novel. Over and over again, I ran into a brick wall that stopped me from moving forward and realizing the full potential of my story, but somehow, that hour and a half of inspiration pushed me right past it all at once. Hallelujah!
We all have little things that inspire us–music, movies, books, weather, etc.–and it’s these things we should remember when we get stuck or can’t seem to find the right mood for a scene. I may have forgotten this for a while but now I remember that these are our little shortcuts to brilliance.
Here are some things that inspire me:
Rain
Jane Austen
Showers
Twilight (the book)(the first one)
Anything by Taylor Swift
The Hunger Games Soundtrack
The Bachelorette (don’t judge me)
Gravity by Sara Bareilles
Break Ups
Green Scenery
Northern Lights by Cider Sky
Country Cabins
Sense & Sensibility (Colonel Brandon fan here)
The Time Traveler’s Wife
Count Me In by Early Winters
So You Think You Can Dance (talk about evoking emotions)
Jonathan Rhys Myers
Pride & Prejudice
A successful undisclosed woman in my life
Don’t Make Me Wait by This World Fair
And, oh yeah…The Lucky One.
What are you inspirational triggers? What gets your muse’s attention? What makes you feel brilliant?
I Suck Syndrome: Recognize it and Beat it
Warning: This post contains LOTS of pictures of my animals.
Sometimes it’s all too easy to get lost in the mechanics of writing, and we lose sight of what’s important: the reader, the story, the feeling we get when we hear what the reader thinks of our story. These are the most important things to me as a writer.
Lately I’ve been dealing with a bout of “I Suck Syndrome” or ISS. I know we’ve all been there. In keeping with this month’s theme, I thought I’d create a list of symptoms and remedies.
SYMPTOMS
- Taking NUMEROUS pictures of animals (I mean, they’re so cute. How could you not?)
- Obsessive email/Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest checking (also known as procrastination)
- You find yourself confused or feel like you don’t belong (kind of like my cat chilling in the dog’s crate)
- Heart palpitations whenever thinking about your story
- Random outbursts of “OH MY GOD I NEED CHOCOLATE NOW!”
- Cleaning the house (whenever I clean the house I ask myself, “What am I avoiding?”)
- Tears (nuff said)
- Sudden impulses to delete lots of pages at a time (just make sure you save them!)
- The “I suck” song that plays over and over in your head like a singalong song
- Literally saying, “I suck!” out loud whenever you look over your story
- Writing, deleting, writing, deleting, writing, deleting (you get the idea), because nothing you write that
day seems good enough - The feeling of being trapped, but you don’t know what to do about it
- You find yourself buying more bottles of wine or beer
- The nagging voice in your head refuses to go away
REMEDIES
- Numerous trips to the froyo place (red velvet cake batter mixed with caramel is the best combination EVER)
- A chat with a good friend who will make you laugh no matter your mood
- Pictures of animals (can you tell this is therapeutic for me?)
- Video games (killing zombies always helps)
- Reading a book by your favorite author
- Hugs
- Chocolate
- The Hugs-and-Chocolate community
We love you all, and we hope you know it. - Curling up with a movie
- Cotton candy
- Sleep (we often forget we need sleep, and sometimes sleep makes us feel so much better
- Coffee or tea
- Treat yourself to your favorite meal,a pedicure, something to pamper yourself
- A walk through a museum
- Wine
- Have I mentioned animals?
Do I feel like this all the time? Of course not. But it’s much easier to remember days I think, “Wow. That paragraph was nothing but a bunch of self indulgent garbage,” over days when I think, “Hey, that’s not half bad!”. I Suck Syndrome is far from fun. In fact, it scares fun away into a dark corner. We as creative folks tend to be extra hard on ourselves. If our work doesn’t pass our own eyes then how can we expect it to pass the eyes of our readers? That’s just it. Sometimes we may have blinders over our eyes. We get so close to our own work that we can’t see the forest for the trees. We can’t see our story for how it really is, which is never as bad as we think.
If you can, seek encouragement. Talk it out if it helps. I know that sometimes I want to be alone. I’ll wallow in it for a bit, and then pick myself back up and keep going. I’ve gotten to know a lot of our readers pretty well, and I know there’s a fire in your belly that keeps you writing your stories. This is what you want more than anything. You tell I Suck Syndrome that it’s not going to get the best of you. You’re going to continue writing your brilliant story, and people are going to love it. In fact, they already do. Back it up into a corner so it goes into hiding.
Delete! Delete! Delete!
A while ago Courtney did a great post of filter words: Filtering Filter Words in Your Writing, and I thought I’d expand a bit on it.
Since we’re doing lists this month, I LOVE LISTS, I thought I’d share with you the special words I’ve collected over the last year or so. These are all words that are overused, intensifiers, things that promote tell instead of show, and words that are just generally unnecessary. Some of them are from personal experience, pointed out to me by one of my CPs Ladonna Watkins(with each manuscript I lose the old ones and pick up a new word or two, this time around it’s because), others I’ve seen in blog posts and tweets. I collect them all in what I call my novel notebook. Whenever I’m done with a MS, the first thing I do is start on this list and delete/replace all the words on my Delete List. I do this three times, once after the first draft, then again right before I send the novel to my CPs, then one last time after I’ve gone through my CPs’ notes and made the changes. It takes some time but at the end of the day it’s worth the effort.
So without further ado, here are the evil words! I’ll bold the ones I’m guilty of, just for fun.
Really
Very
Pretty
A little
Look
Feel in all its forms
Look in all its forms
Turn in all its forms
That
Had
was -ing
Probably
Possibly
Simply
Totally
Supposedly
Seriously
Terribly
Allegedly
Quite
Sort of
Kind of
Usually
Extremely
Almost
Mostly
Practically
Actually
Suddenly
Finally
Something
Just
Like
This/these
There was/were
There are
What else
Seem
It is
As if
Began to
Intensifiers:
Absolute
Awesome
Fabulous
Fantastic
Incredible
Magnificent
Terrific
Wonderful
*Back
*Eyes
Here’s a link with more, feel free to stop by: The Search-and-Find Feature
Have you got words to add to the list?
*Words added from the comments.
Courtney Koschel has been writing since she could hold a crayon. She has worked as a journalist, editor, technical writer, and technical editor. Young adult fiction is near and dear to her heart, which is why she writes YA and all of its glorious sub-genres.
Tonia Marie Houston is a mother, writer, poet, bookworm, and blogger. When sheís not chasing her three spider monkeys, she spends her time revising a young adult novel about life after death and second chances. Though she began to pursue her career later in life, she hopes to inspire and motivate other writers to put their best book forward.
This native Texan now lives with her Scottish hubby in North Ayrshire, Scotland, where she wanders the moors in search of William Wallace. She has been a guest blogger on Writer Unboxed and is currently working on the sequel to her YA supernatural novel, Touched by Darkness.
Jamie Raintree writes what she likes to call everyday fairytale love stories, featuring the little moments in life that are truly magical. She lives in Arizona with her husband and daughter and is currently editing her second novel.
Jani Grey is a South African ambivert, writer, reader, optimist, and bacon enthusiast. When her boss isnít looking she writes, revises, or edits YA Urban Fantasies in between work. Sheís sneaky like that. Sheís a NaNoWriMo addict and is currently working on two NaNo novels.
Rebecca Fields is a modern gypsy, roaming from place to place in search of ñ well, sheíll let you know when she finds it. Writing has become a way for her to share her adventures, both real and imagined. Along with her on her journey are her son and an assortment of rescued animals.
