Unnecessary

I am in, what I lovingly refer to, as revision hell. It’s a lovely venue with me trying to navigate suggestions of wording along with recovering from my overall addiction to the comma. Plus, I am a novice with the editing program and there is frequent cussing as I forget to turn off said program in order to change the verbiage. This is my 500th revision. Kidding. It just feels like it.

This particular editing involves getting rid of useless punctuation and pointing out my obsession with certain words. These words are deemed “unnecessary”. I am learning a lot about myself. The words pointed out to me were: really, obviously, literally, in fact, actually, just, apparently, and own. Jesus. This observation has made me overly paranoid that I speak like I write. It provides me with tremendous gratitude, that someone isn’t editing me when I talk. Shit. Now that is probably going to be a thing. Nevertheless, I am annoyed with myself.

There were a little over 1,000 corrections/suggestions in a 71,000 word manuscript. I keep reminding myself that isn’t awful. This is the process. It’s like raising your kid to venture out into the world. You want them to be the best version of themselves, and the same goes for this book.

In fact, I literally love the opportunity to really focus on words that are obviously overused. I own it. It’s just hard to imagine that I couldn’t find any other words to overuse. Actually, I was surprised that I wasn’t called out for the amount of cussing the main character does. She’s colorful. But, apparently, that wasn’t a factor in the process. Now that I vomited those words on the page, I am confident that my next manuscript will be void of them. Maybe.