Thursday, March 03, 2005

bad habits

The Ruthless Editor is perhaps not as ruthless as she once was, but she is definitely back in residence. I was just noticing some of my weak (or weird) writing habits.

The one that I really have to watch for is using a colon (":") to connect two sentences. It's completely wrong, and I do it all the time. I use it as a gesture, "see, there --" almost like pointing to something. Or sometimes I use it as a replacement for other phrases or words, like "for example," or "while" or "then." It's just lazy. I would love for it to become my endearing trademark when I ever decide to publish something creative, but I'm pretty sure that any editor would dispense with it immediately.

Other lazy things: too many "so"s, to many "anyways". I am bad at transitions.

Way too many adverbs. (hee!)

Over-writing. I am always over-writing. (see?)

Last, always being in too much of a rush.

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