Characters always LOOKING at each other

It was serendipitous timing, when Nathan Bransford posted his latest blog about writing tics, because that's something I've been thinking about a bit while working on a book revision.

Though this is a big revision, so it's more "writing book from scratch" for the most part and I'm not actively looking for my writing tics, but it made me think about what they are. And as all writers do, I have a few.

Mine are different to what I thought they were going to be though. How do I know for SURE which words are showing up in my manuscript more than others?

I created a word cloud with Wordle. Mine has a lot of LOOKED, LIKE, AROUND and BACKs in it. Yeah, okay, my characters look at each other, look at the floor, the wall, into the distance, I understand why there's a lot of LOOKing. Much of this is probably unnecessary and I'll be hacking away at it in my next pass. AROUND probably follows many of the LOOKs, but LIKE? And BACK? It'll be interesting to see what sort of context all of those BACKs and LIKEs are in.

My Word Cloud looks pretty kick ass, I just don't know how to save it to show you. Any clues?

In the meantime, back to my revisions! I'm on mid-semester break at the moment and spending it being as productive as I can. Spending most of my holiday in my writing cave keeps me out of the FREEZING cold weather outside, so I think I've made the right choice. :)

Ciao for now,

Sairz

Butt in Chair

Nathan Bransford, Literary Agent and upcoming debut author put it brilliantly.

Put what brilliantly? The pain involved in being a writer, that I sometimes feel my friends don't quite understand and I am often pissed off about (not pissed about their not understanding, pissed about the PAIN).

Nathan wrote about Butt in Chair.

If you have NOT clicked over to the link to have a quick peruse of what he's talking about, he's talking about this:

All those times a writer (me, for example) is SO frustrating to her/his friends and says 'No I can't go, I have to write.' 'I better leave early, I have to write.' or 'That sounds like SO much fun, but I have to write.'

They're just as hard for me to say as for you to deal with me not being able to make plans with you because of writing. They're even harder when during that specified time of fun, when I know everyone else is having a blast and I only end up writing 200 words, or worse, NOTHING? I mean, I missed out for THIS?

But yeah. To get a book written, it's all about putting your frickin butt in the frickin chair and frickin DOING IT. And missing out on stuff. It's a lot about missing out on stuff. It's also a lot about the enjoyment and love of what you're doing, but that's not what this post is about.

Butt in Chair, baby.

Thank you.