Just done something, either brave or very stupid.

I've just finished the third edit of what I hope and believe is my best, and longest novel. It's called The Book of Pain and spans four hundred years.

   I'm relatively happy with it at the moment but have just done something I may regret, and just to make sure have made several back-ups, or should that be backs-up?

   I did a global search and deleted every single occurence of the words, that, which and had.

   I haven't summoned the courage yet to open it but will begin tonight.

   Ginger, the online everything checker suggests that my writing is that of a three year old or semi illiterate budgie.

   It will be interesting to see if I can re-write the novel using those three words only once per paragraph or even fewer although a simple knowledge of english suggests that they must be used occasionally.

   Whatever happens I can only think that their removal must help since I hate passive verbs and always try to work them out.

   If you don't hear from me for a while it's because I've leapt head first off the mountain which is my tea cup littered desk.

   The fact that I've used "that" eight times in this blog might explain Ginger's exasperation with me.

   Last evening I discovered one of my first novels written over twenty years ago and stored on a five and a quarter inch floppy - talk about prehistoric.

  I wonder if it's salvageable? It will probably be "that" infested.

   i also found one wot i rote but printed off twenty five years ago. I always loved it; unfortunately the first one hundred and fifteen pages are missing. At least I'll have plenty of writing for the next year. I bet it's cringe-makingly awful.