I’m guest posting today at Rebecca Belliston’s March Book Madness. Dribble on over to her site to read what I have to lay up about Weeding Your Words. You’ll score a three-pointer if you do. Okay…enough of the basketball lingo. Back to weeds…in honor of spring. In my post, I will introduce several literary weeds and show you how to eradicate them from your writing. Happy weeding.
19 thoughts on “Weed Your Words”
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Joy in the Moments 
Weeding your words was a nice twist. I enjoyed the link to noxious weeds. Every gardener and writer will understand this post.
Thanks, Dennis. I combined my two loves–gardening and writing. When weeds get too thick in my yard, it’s easy to get lazy and surrender…and it’s the same with writing. When we let too many weeds into our stories, it bogs down the plot and all the energy fizzles. Best to clean up weeds along the way so they don’t get to strong and choke what we’re really trying to say.
Great post….informative – quilty as charged. Now can you help me with ridding tumbleweed? 🙂
Tumbleweed! Why didn’t I think of that one? I even grew up on Tumbleweed Avenue.
Love the extra basketball analogies. 🙂 Thanks again for posting. It’s awesome.
Yeah, I was building up steam for the basketball words, and then realized I was posting about weeding. The two didn’t go together. Oh well.
No, it’s awesome. I need more basketball in the theme. 🙂
A great article, Char!
Thanks, Carrie. I managed to pull one off without referencing chocolate. Ouch. I just hurt myself patting myself on the back. That’s what I get for getting older.
Oh, boy, don’t even get me started on back pain. The joys of getting older…
Excellent post! I’ve bookmarked the Smart Edit website and will look into it. It (oops) looks like a very (oops) helpful tool!
Ha ha! I love all your oops. I’ve decided we put a lot of weeds in when we talk normal…that’s why you don’t want to take them all out in writing, or it sounds too forced in dialogue. We use adverbs, non-specific words all the time in speech (except if we’re doing formal public speaking). Hope you enjoy the Smart Edit. I thought it was eye opening to use at some point in your WIP to help you realize your own flaws and tendencies. On this next book, I’ve been more careful about certain things that I discovered with Smart Edit on Book 2 before I did the final edit. So hopefully I’ll improve over time and get better at not adding so many weeds to my stories.
Loved your post, Char over at Rebecca Belliston’s MBM. When you mentioned weed I thought, hang on, what’s Char smoking? Only kidding, of course. 😉 I’ll print your post so I can check my never-ending editing checklist.
Ha ha! That’s classic. One of my friends told me the other day he was pushing my book like crack, so I guess the smoking goes with that. And did you notice, I put a plug in for Smart Edit. I got that from your site a while ago. It’s pretty nifty.
Ah, well, literature is our drug of choice. 🙂 I love any program like Smart Edit that helps reduce the tedium of editing. Glad you find it useful.
What a great post, Char. I’ve been very busy weeding lately 😀
I noticed a bunch of grasses poking up today and groaned. Grasses are the worst—their root systems are massive and hardy. Ick.
This was a fun take on what can be a daunting, annoying chore that never seems to end!! I never knew about the software. That’s a bonus for writers who can’t always hire someone else to do the ‘dirty work’. 🙂
Yeah, I liked how the program found everything and organized it for me so I could go search and destroy afterward.