Words Are Ebil
Yesterday I entered Revisions Hell.
It is not really a nice place to be, but maybe I can at least get a tan while I’m visiting.
I discovered, just while doing spell check, that I am a word addict. Not in the general sense of ‘I’m a writer, I’m addicted to words.’ No, I fall into the ‘I just can’t help myself, I must use this word over and over and over again and misspell it EVERY DAMN TIME.’
I also make words up. Particularly adverbs, which I should be limiting, not making up more of.
I cannot help myself when it comes to complicated sentences that look like comma confetti. I cannot tell you just how many sentences I’ve had to pick apart, simply because they are impossible to read.
I have, apparently, left sanity behind at some point. And the rules of grammar. (Ok, my grammar isn’t too bad, I’m not often finding things that are glaring mistakes or massive mis-usages. Which is just wonderful. I am just prone to gross abuse of those rules.) And there I go making up words again!
So, here is my little list of words I over use with a glorious disregard to conventions of literature:
Embarrass – FMC (female main character) is always embarrassed and I spell it wrong every single time.
Murmur – None of my characters are very up on diction and enunciation. Go figure.
Scraggly – This is a particular favorite of mine. Everyone needs to go get themselves cleaned up, since half my characters are described as being scraggly.
Eyes – I have a distinct obsession with my characters’ eyes and I refuse to use words like ‘orbs,’ and ‘optics’ to replace it.
Though – I have no defense, though I’m having a hard time getting rid of them.
Weird – This is another one I habitually misspell. And yes, everything is weird.
Guilt – Not remorse, retribution, blame, culpability or any other synonym. Just guilt.
There are more. So many more. I should keep a proper list and share the whole thing. I have made good friends with a thesaurus to help with this horrible affliction.