My novella has some pictures in it, and strange things done with the formatting. I wonder how that will go over or who will like and dislike it... I need to take one more picture to stick in there, and finish editing of course, then I will get to hear from some readers whether all …
Finally editing
Enough with short stories! I'm finally getting some momentum on editing my longer works and moving toward them being ready to submit somewhere. My optimistic goal is to have both my novel and novella ready to send places before winter is over. Very optimistic, I know...
Gerunds
I hate them! I am going through my novel and highlighting all of them. Of course, not all are bad all of the time, but I think they are a good indicator of where a sentence can be improved. Ing, with, still, again, had been, began to, was, etc. Lots of words that can be …
Dual mind
Writing takes love, self confidence, optimism, and hope in order to complete anything. But editing, I am coming to believe, takes hate, pessimism, and self-disgust. A writer has to be two people, two halves isolated from each other--the writing half is an excited person full of energy and love for the words they are creating …
Word Peevs: we all have them!
Often times:  Why don't you just say 'often'? Begs the question: 95% of the time you mean 'raises the question.' Familiar pronounced as Fur-miliar: Unless you are talking about your cat... The problem is, is...: The thing is, is this is really annoying for me. The question is, is this annoying to anyone else? Don't get …

