I'm at the point in my editing where it's that time again. What time is it? It's Crutch Word time! That glorious time when I search through my manuscript for specific words and then eradicate them.
This is not as simple as Find and delete, delete, delete. No, no. That would really screw things up. This is Find, fix, Find Next, fix... on and on until you've gone through the whole thing and then repeat with the next word.
Actually the first thing I do is Find each word and then click Highlight All, so it gives me a total. Then I write the number down on my handy-dandy list of words. After I have all the numbers, I start fixing them. After I complete each word, I get a new total, so I can see where I'm at and whether I need to scour for that word again.
Yesterday, I did THAT and LIKE and about 2/3rds of SAID. It took me about 5 hours - an hour in the morning and a couple hours each in the afternoon and evening. I intended to keep going and stay up late, but I got to the point with SAID that I was skipping instances without really looking at them or changing anything. It's time to stop when it's no longer working. I'll hit it again today.
And when I get it all done, I'll hit the manuscript with the spelling/grammar checker to make sure I didn't screw anything up while I was fixing things.
I will have this ready to go out before bed tonight. If it kills me. Which it just might. (Heh, not really.)
Once it goes out, I'll take some time to write the blurb. And think about what's next on the writing schedule. And maybe just chill out for a couple days.
What's up in your world?
Chilling is always good after a marathone session of writing/editing/proofing. I'm getting better at catching my clutch words as I write and then the first couple of passes of editing.
ReplyDeleteI bought a new hanging bird bath and put it on the shepherd's crook with the bird feeder. I may have to take it down and rethink things. I've seen not one bird at feeder OR bath since doing it. Also, Wallyworld was completely out of sunflower seed and almost all bird seed of every kind. That's kinda scary. I needed the sunflower for the squirrels. I ended up getting a small back of squirrel feed--sunnflowers, corn, and peanuts--to tide over until I can find a big bag of sunflower seed.
Got some writing done. Not huge amounts but a couple of chapters. Speaking of squirrely, that's Sade and Sinjen at the moment. Hopefully, they'll figure their $h!+ out over the weekend.
And speaking of that, have a good one! Weekend, that is. 😉
Fixing crutch words is tiring but rewarding. The story feels so much tighter afterward.
ReplyDeleteDon't kill yourself doing it, though. Coffee breaks are mandatory!
I can't wait to read it!