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Work Week is as Work Week Does

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The New Yorker

The New Yorker (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Friday at last. I don’t know about you, but I have had a grueling week. I finished up a couple of short stories for submission to several magazines. Never know if they will be accepted, but since I am planning an anthology of them, nothing is ever wasted. In the anthology I don’t believe I will have to give a disclaimer that “this story was rejected by the New Yorker,” or anything like that. So it really doesn’t matter if the story gets published or not, since I will be able to use it one way or another.

I am also still working on editing my second novel. I won’t bore you with the fact that my first is still with the publisher and no date of release as yet. WTF. . .  it is a good thing I made my fortune in freeze-dried tacos* because if I relied on book sales to eat I would be a very skinny guy indeed. Right now I am going through the entire text with the idea of eliminating certain words that are the hallmark of an amateur. These are the kinds of words that have the effect of slowing the action or at the least, making strong sentences very weak. So that you may benefit from my pain, here are the words that I am eliminating while choosing other ways to complete the thought that I am trying to project. The are: about, actually, almost, like, appears, approximately, basically, close to, even, eventually, exactly, finally, just, just then, kind of, nearly, practically, really, seems, simply, somehow, somewhat, sort of, suddenly, that, truly, utterly, were.

I wish I could say when I use the “find” feature on Word that the results come back with no matches. I wish I could say that, but unfortunately it just doesn’t happen. When writing sometimes we fall into the lazy mode of getting the idea down on paper (so to speak) and not looking at construction. There is really nothing wrong with that as long as we go back and make the corrections.

*Piece of fiction warning

To end the week I have a little Haiku which sums up the editing process.

Edit This by John W. Howell

Every word I wrote,

Placed carefully on the page. . .

Comes under the knife.

 

Have a great weekend. Oh and while you’re up,

would you get me another Margarita? Thanks.

 


Filed under: Editing, fiction, TGIF Tagged: author, books, fiction favorites, John W. Howell Author, TGIF, Writing and Editing

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