“Writing is easy. All you have to do is sit down at the typewriter and open a vein.” Red Smith
As part of my ongoing drive to become a Better Writer, here are some irritating writing tics I’ve identified in my work that I want to eradicate in 2005:
1. An annoying attachment to alliteration. Obscenely overused and unbelievably ubiquitous.
2. A stunning, towering and epic over-reliance on adjectives and superlatives.
3. I’ve never met a deadline I liked. Time to make friends with some of them.
4. Probably linked to my innate ability to procrastinate endlessly, but I seem to start a lot of things that get abandoned or left alone, never to be looked at again. Time to start wrapping up some loose threads.
5. Over-use of some dodgy metaphors and similes. I rely on them like a pimp on his stable of hos.
No doubt there are more unruly kinks that I need to violently pummel into submission, but I think this little lot will keep me busy for now.
Some links to read:
Why being anonymous on your blog can be a Good Thing, and why Waterstone’s have just bitten themselves in the ass.
The e-mail scammers get scammed. “When all above seems a great test, Get on down with the Holy Red Breast.”
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