I've decided that when I'm published and therefore have enough credentials that anyone will pay attention to me, the workshop I give at writers meetings and conferences will be on the usefulness of adverbs, forms of "to be," and the past perfect tense. Because I am officialLY tired of people telling new writers they are bad things, which new writers interpret as meaning they must avoid them at all costs.

Susan for Editor-in-Chief!

The thing is, there's a sound principle behind all the advice. It's just not anything close to an absolute. But for some reason it's very hard to explain the nuances.

If you need a guest speaker, I'm in.

I'm especially fierce in defense of the adverb, used properly.

Question--in the most recent section I took to my Monday writers group, I referred to Anna getting a stitch in her side (as in, the pain you get from walking or running past your normal limits, not a gut wound being sewn up). One of the group members circled it with a question mark. That's not some obscure Southernism, is it?

I'm familiar with the usage, but apparently my home region has a lot more Southernism than I previously thought. I thought it was fairly common.

That's not some obscure Southernism, is it?

I always used it as a kid. I don't know where I picked it up, but my grampa was from the midwest. Maybe he passed it down.

We used it here. My Nova Scotian grandmother (born 1906) used it, too.

Too true. (Where "too" is, technically, an adverb.)

Adverbs are like cookies that way. Everybody thinks you can't have any, or you have to have the whole box in a sitting. Surely the course of moderation can be discovered?

OK, sounds universal enough that I'm going to leave it for now.