I'm sitting here on the sofa with my laptop and the rug at my feet is littered with a (virtual) rising tide of discarded adverbs -- softly, slowly, evenly, quickly, coldly, eagerly, quietly, enthusiastically, and all their sisters and their cousins and their aunts.
Also among the fallen are any number of smiles, smiled, he said smiling, along with a lot of grinning and chuckling. And excess verbiage -- out it goes. He said that he was glad.; She parked the car.
Most of you know that I do some editing -- in the course of the classes I teach and sometimes I take on a novel (for pay, not for fun.) Sometimes it is fun though and sometimes I want to jab pencils in my eyes, the writing is so bad (very rare, thank goodness.)
The novel I'm editing now is a first novel by a middle-aged woman and boy, does it show -- a little Nancy Drew-ish, a little soap opera-ish, and all those adverbs.
But wait, you say, what are you thinking, to be so harsh in such a public way? What if that poor woman reads your blog? She'll be devastated! Probably never write again!
The novel I'm editing is my first novel. The one with Elizabeth Goodweather and Blackbeard's descendant. The one that got me an agent but never found a publisher. The one that I can't find an electronic copy of anywhere.
Until last week when I did. It's not complete but it has the first seventeen chapters (out of twenty-eight) and as I don't have a writing project or a class underway at the moment, I decided to get Whose Revenge? onto my computer so I can send a copy to the nice Park Ranger who spent a lot of time helping me with research at Cape Lookout about fifteen years ago.
He contacted me maybe three years ago, wanting to know what had happened with the novel (there is a ranger in it, based on him) and I told him I would try to get a copy to him -- if ever I found it. I do have a hard copy (unedited) but didn't want to send it off.
And I absolutely wouldn't send it off as is, what with all those adverbs.
So now here I am, editing my work of fifteen years ago -- appalled at all the amateurish mistakes I made but realizing that there's something comforting in knowing that I did get better.
