As a new writer, I read blogs, news articles, and commentaries from other writers. I read tip and techniques compiled, from sources whenever I come across them. I knew I'm still learning and have a long way to go. Thus far, I have written over 300,000 words. I figure after 500,000 words, a half million, a milestone for me, that I should have learned something. And I have, even up to this point, learned something I mean. That something is recognizing weaknesses or nuances in writing. For example, I suspected and it was confirmed in my first novel that I overused the word, "but." I somehow would set up my sentence structure that to complete it, required the use of "but". I overused it to join two thoughts together. I had to rethink how I was going to write down those thoughts and how to better write them without overusing a word. As I continued to write, I noticed that I would overuse other words, such as, "to be," which is considered passive voice. I researched the passive voice and continue to study it with the goal in mind of improving my writing. Writing in a particular fashion, at least for me, is not an easy thing to change. The changing of my writing structure is not a simple thing. It felt uncomfortable. Despite that, I experimented with how to record a thought that would make sense to the reader. I heard a saying, 'when the student is ready, the teacher will appear'. To me, with writing in mind, I have found that if I overuse a word, and I realize it, I search for examples of that, to find what others have done, or examples of how to overcome the situation. At that point, I felt I was ready to change it up. I do admit, I have a stubborn streak that takes awhile before I'm willing to do something about it. In my next blog, I will talk about my dilemma of dividing a story into two parts because of its length.
Keep smiling.
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