When you’ve done your first draft, then edited it, edited it again, and again…you’ve probably smoked out some plot kinks, maybe some structural flaws, and smoothed out some inconsistencies.  You might call this a macro or big picture edit.  Now it’s time to get into the weeds.

Do a search for words ending in “ly”, take them out unless absolutely necessary (like the one I just used).  Adverbs don’t move the story forward, they accent something that shouldn’t need accenting: strong words.

Do a search for the phrase “the fact that” and restructure it.  Any sentence with this in it can be shortened by at least three words and made stronger.

Search for the word “also”, usually signifying the passive voice.  Reword.

Strength lies in brevity and action, not in more words.  Now go fire it up.

Recovering from a fall off a ladder.  Am I telling you this for sympathy?  Not really, if you want to feel bad for me that’s fine, but my real message here is I discovered the hospital is a terrible place to write.

We all think, “Oh, if I just had some quiet time, some guilt free time off then I could really write.”  Wrong.  If you can’t write now, you won’t write in the hospital, on vacation or at the beach on that day off.

I have no excuses, and neither do you…the only solution is to do what the greats did, and do…write, rewrite, write some more.  It will start out bad, make you question your validity, and then somehow turn into something you’re proud to call your own.  And that my friend, is why you’re here in the first place.  Onward.