How Being on a Diet is Like Writing a Book

One of my goals this year (like many people out there) was to lose weight. Starting in January, I hit the diet trail...and I'm doing pretty well. While doing dishes yesterday, I got to thinking (as I often do...I really should do dishes more often - great epiphany zone)...

Being on a diet is a lot like writing a book.

Why? Well, I'll tell you :)

1. There are a lot of ups and downs

Some days you are going to get on that scale and see an awesome weight loss. And other days, you might see nothing...you might even gain. Even if you did everything absolutely, perfectly right, sometimes the scale just doesn't reflect all your hard work.

Same with writing. Sometimes everything just falls into place. Your prose is perfect, every scene is turning out exactly how you wanted, your manuscript is polished and gorgeous and requests are overloading your inbox. And other times, all that may be true but you still hear nothing but crickets. Even though you put in all the hard work, even though everything is perfect and there is nothing more you can do to help your manuscript improve, sometimes you still don't get the results you deserve.

So, should you quit? No! Because if you quit, you negate all the hard work you've put into it. No matter what your results are that day, you have to just keep at it.

2. Everything in moderation

I love me some chocolate. LOVE IT. To the point of obsession, seriously. Is it bad for me? No. Not in moderation. Are french fries, chocolate shakes, ice cream, brownies, donuts, chips, dips, pies, cakes (getting carried away here :D ) bad for me? No, they aren't. Well maybe if I eat them all in one day....every day :D But in moderation? No. These things are just fine.

Well, when it comes to my writing, adverbs are my brownies. Sentence fragments are my pizza. Long, rambling, complex sentences are my Doritos. Are these things bad? No. As long as I use them in moderation. A few here and there are great, a treat for my readers. Too many and I'm in danger of giving my readers an overload that will cause nausea and cavities. :)

3. Do what you don't want to do and get what you want to get

Do I want to exercise every day? No. Do I want to eat chicken and celery soup for lunch instead of the leftover pizza or Mexican that everyone else is eating? Heck no!

Will I get better results and feel better if I do? Yes. *le sigh*

Do I want to write every single day? Not always. Do I want to rewrite a scene for the 1000th time? Not usually.

Will I get better results and feel better about my manuscript if I do. Yes *le sigh* :)

Does this mean that you have to exercise (or write) every day, or pass up every single piece of pizza (or ignore the rewrite)? Of course not.

But...it's better for me, and the results I'm after, if I do these things at least a few times a week. Don't feel like writing today - fine. But write tomorrow, or at least the next day. Don't want to rewrite that scene right now? So don't. But if you want results, be sure to come back to it in a few days.

Stay tuned on Thursday for more ways diets and writing are the same :) Now if you'll excuse me, there's a nice steaming bowl of chicken and celery soup with my name on it :D

Tip Thursday - Adverb Adventure

I learned a lot of things from my first crit group. One of the first "rules" I learned was the whole "don't use adverbs" thing. I balked at this one. I just didn't get the reasoning. I LIKED adverbs. I still like adverbs. And I use them, frequently. At least in my first drafts. (Okay, a lot of the pesky little buggers DO make their way into subsequent drafts, but I really do try to keep them out of there.) :D

It took me a while to really understand why adverbs are kind of a no-no. In fact, it wasn't until I started paying more attention to them in the published books I was reading that I finally got it.

They are telling. And sometimes just plain irritating. But mostly, too telling, and often unnecessary.

For example, you could say:

"Don't do that!" Jessica shouted angrily.

1. It's unnecessary. There's an exclamation point. She's shouting. And chances are good the content of the scene in addition to her shouting have already let us know she's doing it angrily. You don't need the adverb.

2. It's telling us she's angry, not showing us. Don't just tell us....bring on the anger! Let us see her eyes flashing, her face turning red, the spit flying from her lips as she screams. Isn't that more entertaining to read than "angrily"?


Now, do you need to cut every single adverb in your book? Of course not. There are instances where adverbs are totally warranted. Like I said, I do use them. Sometimes a good adverb is the best fit for whatever you are trying to say. However, most of the time, I try to use them just as place holders in my first drafts...when I know I should be more "showing" and descriptive but feel the need to get some words out and the more descriptive phrase eludes me. But I try to go back through and replace them with something better (though, yeah, a lot slip through the cracks. Just ask my crit partners...they are endlessly slashing them (hehe I used an adverb...shhhhh)).

And a few here and there aren't going to kill your story - they might even help. So don't go axing all the adverbs in your manuscript just yet....but, try to pay attention to what you are doing the next time you put one in. Does it really need to be there? Is adding it making your sentence too telling? Can you show whatever you are trying to describe better?

One thing I have noticed is that adverbs in dialogue tags are almost always unnecessary. She said, angrily. He said, amusingly. I said sadly.

These emotions can almost always be better conveyed through the characters' actions and the dialogue itself. So, while it is something I will probably always struggle with, it is a "rule" I finally agree with and will continue to work on.


How do you feel about the "adverb rule"?

Things I have Learned in the Editing Trenches

I now have two finished novels and one almost finished non-fiction book. And I think it is safe to say that I have spent a lot more time editing these manuscripts than I did actually writing them. Though there are times I enjoy editing, sometimes it can be one huge pain in the butt.

However, I have learned so much from this process…mostly from my fabulous critique partners. Things they don’t teach you in writing classes. Things you only really learn when you make the mistake and are lucky enough to have someone point it out to you.

Here are a few things that I have learned while mucking through the messes that are my pre-edited manuscripts:

1. POV –

Point of View…..wow….now this used to be something I was horrible at. Not just mildly bad at with the occasional mistake. Oh no. When I made POV mistakes, they were epic. I literally had four POVs in one paragraph before. And I was notorious for head hopping every other paragraph or so.

My first critique group whipped that out of me. I am now pretty sensitive to POV problems and do fairly well at avoiding them myself. But it took some work. One of my crit buddies told me to imagine a camera on the head of my main character (if that is the POV I am writing in). Then she told me that I couldn’t describe anything that that particular character couldn’t see, hear, feel, think, etc. If I wanted to get in another character’s head, I needed a scene or chapter break. It really helped curb my head hopping tendencies.

2. Getting rid of sentences that start with “I” –

This is something I’ve struggled with lately. My awesome crit partners have been breaking me of this habit. My current novel is the first I’ve written in first person. It’s taken a little getting used to. I start a LOT of sentences with the word “I.” Now, that isn’t always bad. It is in first person, so it’s going to happen.

But I have a lot of sentences that say things like “I felt,” “I heard,” “I saw.” My crit buddies point out that if I reword these sentences to get rid of the “I’s,” the sentences end up much stronger, more active. For example, one of my sentences was:

“I inhaled, breathing in the sandalwood scent of him .”

I changed it to – “The sandalwood scent of him filled my senses, making me slightly dizzy.”

A small change, and the first sentence wasn’t bad or wrong (in my opinion), but the change makes it a little more active…and gets rid of yet another sentence starting with “I.”

3. Telling vs. Showing
This is something I still struggle with. Especially when it comes to emotions. Part of this problem stems from when I write my first drafts. I tend to use a lot of narration and I also use phrases like “I was scared” or “I was mad” as place holders, intending to fill them out more with action when I go back through the second draft. Sometimes I just miss these, but there are a lot of instances when I think what I have is fine on the first read-through, when in reality, I just need to show more and tell less.

Now, sometimes it is actually better to tell than show; you can’t show every tiny thing that happens. But for the most part, if you can show the reader something with your descriptions rather than just spelling it out for them, it will make your book much stronger. (One of these days I’ll get this one down…. :D )

4. The dreaded Adverb

Okay, now don’t kick me out of the writing club, but I actually like an adverb every now and then. One of my dreams is to make it big enough that I can toss adverbs in anywhere I want and not have anyone say a word about them ;-D But yes *sigh* these are technically no-no’s, and in many cases unnecessary.

This was another thing I was horrible with when I first started writing – my first crit group gave me the very unwelcome news that editors didn’t like adverbs. It was a surprise, and not a pleasant one. But I’ve learned to do without them whenever possible. I do like to use them as placeholders during my first draft, but I try to weed them out in subsequent drafts.

Although, to be honest, I left a ton of them in my current book. I like some of them, but I also wanted to see how many I could get away with :D Not many, I’m afraid. My crit buddies have started highlighting them LOL Oh well. Some day :)

5. Repetition –

Again, something I was, and still am, horrible with. Actually, I have gotten much better. But I do tend to repeat words and phrases. And each book seems to have its own group of words that keep popping up. With my first book, it was the phrase “a bit.” I also once had a paragraph where I was describing a table. I used the word “table” six times in that one paragraph. And I was always saying my characters’ names when saying “he” or “she” would work just as well.

With this book, it is the words “though” and “headed.” Every time I have someone going somewhere, I say “they headed.” It’s horrible. I’m working on it :D

What’s interesting to me is that I am now very sensitive to this problem in other people’s manuscripts, and even in my own. Yet somehow, those words crop up and fly under my radar and my manuscripts end up peppered with them. Good thing I’ve got great crit buddies with awesome eyes :D

How about everyone else? What are some things you have learned since you began writing?