What's Your Favorite?

We all have favorites: favorite colors, favorite animals, favorite books, movies, food, and the list could go on for many pages.

How about a favorite phrase? Or word? Sometimes in our writing we overuse phrases or words. The difficulty comes in identifying those phrases or words (perhaps because we love them, we overlook how often we use them). When I did one of my final editing runs for The Archer's Hollow, I used a list of commonly overused words (that, just, etc.) and discovered not only did I overused them, but there were some phrases I really liked. You can't find these phrases with a read-through. Holy cannoli, by the time I did that edit, I think I'd read that manuscript a hundred times. OK, so that is a bit of an exaggeration, but it felt like it. When you go through and find specific words, you are able to see the manuscript from a different perspective. It's a good thing, I promise.

After your first and maybe second drafts (or even your fifth or sixth), go through searching for those common words and see if you can find your own Pet Phrases. In the meantime, Write On my friends!