My wonderful beta reader sent
back my latest version of Old Geezers 2 this week. Her reaction to the book was largely favourable which thrilled me, especially as I’ve taken great effort to remove my
own most common errors, ie “That, Which and Had: all that passive rubbish.
You might want to check your usage of the word “now”, she
said.
So I did, and to my horror M/S Word glibly informed that it
occurred 892 times in my manuscript. Now, I like now as you can see but had not
realised just how much I liked it. Further research revealed that good old M/S
had also included “know” and “knowing” in the results but that was still a very
big number. Removing 90% of them was relatively easy, but to see just how far
the infection has invaded my system I performed a search of my new novel, The Book
of Pain – 1136 instances. And even allowing for know and knowing, what I’d
assumed to be the final edit in a few weeks is apparently not going to be.
I’m going to check both Geezers and B/o/Pain for other
intruders. I’m not looking forward to the results.
I think all writers have certain words they overuse. I've found that I tend to lead too often with "Well ..."
ReplyDeleteI've been guilty of that one, too.
ReplyDeleteI just want my computer to stop being stupid so I can finish Killer Stilettos.
ReplyDeleteIf you can nurse it along for another 8/10 months, Windows 10 will be here. It's great and I can't wait. If I have to use pen and paper I won't use win 8. But if it's your hardware, talk nicely to it, or do what i do, swear and threaten it.
ReplyDelete