Years of editing Scottish-set romances proves this brilliantly. One more "I dinna ken" and I would have cried.

I blame Robbie Burns for this. And ah, crap. It's almost Burns Day again. [link]

(It occurs to me that I bet a lot of romance writers from the US use Scots inappropriately. Like, for characters from the Gàidhealtachd. Thay shouldna dae that. Tis juist wrong.)

My biggest pet peeve with writing is dialogue that sounds nothing like actual speech patterns. Not dialect, but overly formal, grammatically correct dialogue: "I do not like going to the market alone. Would you like to come with me?"

Most contemporary characters, in casual speech, are going to say something like, "I don't like going to the store alone. Want to come?"

I think that most writing "rules" go out the window in dialogue. People don't speak correctly, and they will say "suddenly", and I think there's a huge realm of difference between "Look out," he said and "Look out!"

Also "There's a spider on you," he said and "There's a spider on you," he whispered.

And I twitch when someone says "Never do X." Not everyone needs to try to be Hemingway.

Gàidhealtachd

I am somewhat shocked to recognize this, and rather pleased to be able to pronounce it, and know what it means.

It's good to recognize your own writing tics. I know I will discover, or rediscover, a word and be so thrilled with it I use it all day. Rereading later, it's written in pink neon, it's so obvious.

Shortcut words and phrases like "suddenly" or any variation of "seem", "just"--once you know you lean on them while getting the narrative down, you can be aware you do so, and deal with them in revision. If you're using "suddenly" too much, you need to write out what is sudden about a given scene and then see how you can telegraph the action in a few streamlined words, rather than use the shortcut word. this is true of almost any overworked adverb.

With words like "just", you can train yourself to recognize at least some of them while you're typing them. Getting the narrative down is most important so you don't want to pause if you're on a roll. But you can take a minute to substitute "only" or another synonym in its place, or a bracketed note to yourself to examine the scene or phrase later and decide if the use is actually needed.

I find half of dialog attribution is unnecessary, anyway. If you're writing a scene that moves, in which the speakers are brushing down their horses or polishing tack, cleaning guns or swords, sharpening knives, cooking, searching for the missing sardines, it's fairly easy for the reader to keep track of who's saying what by your describing the action as the characters speak. It's a more natural flow than simple attribution.

But when attribution is necessary, "said" is the least intrusive, as is "asked". Connie's "whispered" is a very good indicator of when and how one should use another, more descriptive word. But the less of the descriptive attributions you use, the more weight the ones you do use have.

Um. Just a few thoughts. Sorry to go on.

They're good thoughts. I certainly like physical beats better than attribution tags, though, like anything, it can be overdone.

One of my tics is "obviously" to mean "therefore". Basically a lazy transition, and rather insulting to the reader. If it's obvious, why am I saying it? I can't really stop my self. So I just do searches on the word when I'm done with the first draft, which is a good workaround in general for incurable tics.

This book I'm reviewing for a journal is *dull*. Much repetition without conclusion. I have to plough through it even though I've already written the (rather critical) review in note form. Ah well - it might end up making me look at least vaguely intelligent, as a result!

Much repetition without conclusion.

That does sound like a recipe for boredom.

I'm progressing on 45. There are a lot of little developments in this chapter so hopefully it won't be too much stuffed into too few words.

Keep at it, Gud. You're doing great. I'm so impressed with your consistency and effort.

I have a kind of dumb question. What's the approximate word count for an article that would fill an 8 1/2 by 11 page, 12 pt font, probably Book Antiqua or something like that, with some whitespace and maybe a photo or two?

Our crazy communal living way lefty Christian singer of Tuvan throat songs came back from his trip to Tuva. We raised a good bit of money for it, so we're giving him an article in our upcoming newsletter. But he wants to know how long it should be and I'm giving him his own insert, so I don't know. I haven't done it this size before.

Plus I don't give Dave wordcounts. He writes the article and then I edit it furiously to fit the space. I dunno how well that'll go over with our buddy.

Single-spaced, right, Liese? Probably under 400 words to leave room for photos.