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The Road to Hell is Paved with "Thats"

Hi everyone! Sorry for the absence last week. I was feeling a bit sick and couldn't get a post up but I'm back and excited for March. Next week I turn eighteen which is a little exciting and a little scary at the same time.
                                                 (And this gif of the Doctor is pretty much me when I realized I'll be eighteen in eight days!!)

I'm pumped because I just sent out the first chapter to an editor friend and will hopefully find out how much she'll cost and then send in the entire manuscript of Weapon Icean for professional editing. The process is a little nerve racking but also exciting since I've never had an editor look over one of my works before. It's another step closer to getting Weapon Icean published!

Update: I'm also working on book 2 which has had a bit of a rocky start but I'm pushing through and also will have a synopsis of Weapon Icean up here soon.

But anyways, now that my update and exciting news is done I have something to say about the road to hell. I'm not sure where I heard this quote or who said it but it's stuck with me for a long time. Someone said, "The road to hell for writers is paved with adverbs." Now I know most writers have a mutual hatred for adverbs. I sometimes despise them too, especially with how many sneak into my writing but I would say that my writer road to hell is paved with that's. I was going through Weapon Icean and could not believe how many "that's" were in there! It was ridiculous but it just made me realize that every writer has that one word -- or several words that always seems to get into their drafts and sometimes even bogs down their writing.

Personally, I don't mind adverbs too much. I actually sort of love them and I think they have their place. Where others tend to destroy any and all adverbs from their story I tend to keep a few here and there. But after going through and killing as many "that's" as possible I've come to realize my pure hatred for that word. Especially when it comes to it being in my manuscript and ruining some of my sentences.

Go Teen Writers did an excellent post that talked about weasel words and phrases that I found super helpful when it came to my "That's" problem. I also found that my characters did a lot of shrugging, grinning and nodding and I had to diversify and fix up that whole little mess too. Marissa Meyers post on how she edits and revises books helped me get through my manuscript as well and so I thought I'd share the links to the two posts to help you guys out too. You can find the Go Teen Writer post Here and Marissa Meyer's post Here. I hope they're as helpful to you as they are to me.

Have a great rest of the week everyone!

What are some of your weasel words and phrases? What's your road to writer's hell paved in?

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