Sunday, May 6, 2012

Overused to death!

Dear readers,

As a writer(or whatever it is I am), when I write for myself or work on my hopefully to-be novels, I annoy myself by using a few words too often. So, I've highlighted these words that I really need to remove and/or change and there's quite a few of them actually (some of which feature in this blog post, surprise surprise!)
My challenge is, therefore, to half the number of each of those words/phrases.
The offending words are -
  1. Actually
  2. Though
  3. Maybe
  4. Perhaps
  5. Rather
  6. Although
  7. Strange
  8. Of course
  9. Warm
  10. Reassure
 And now, the challenge begins!



Do any of you have those words you just can't seem to let go of? Feel free to share!

Yours
Afsaneh

3 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. For me, it's the semicolon. I used to do half my writing in parenthetical asides, and then I realised that this is what the semicolon is for.

    I'm fairly certain that my writing would benefit by splitting up some of my longer thoughts into shorter, punchier statements, but I don't see giving up my semicolon any time in the near future.

    PS. I just noticed that you use a Leonid Afremov painting in your sidebar, and that it's uncredited. If you are going to use someone else's work you should at least credit the artist. I assume you've contacted him and asked for permission to use it? As writers it behooves us to respect other people's creative work, don't you think?

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  3. Both negligence and confusion on my part, I'm afraid. I've been using my phone for the last month and cannot for the life of me figure out how to edit anything on my blog! But thank you for telling me, I'm trying my best to rectify this right now - I wouldn't want to show any disrespect any artist!

    Thank you for sharing. Semi colons don't sound as threatening as using 'actually' in every alternate sentence!

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I'd love to know your thoughts on this, so do share.