The battle against adverbsity - it was Stephen King's tip what made me do it...

   Hi guys,

   It's been 20 days, and I managed 118 views of my blog (and hopefully clicks on my links, especially that all important free beta copy of 3W over on Dropbox!)

   And a lot has changed. Even my writing. Because my #WritingCommunity follows in the twitterverse, I've come into contact with tips from the writer's writer, Stephen King (no I still haven't read one of his books, but one day I'll watch Pet Sematary), namely his #6 - The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

   Adverbs - verbs that you turn into an adjective, or an adjective you verbify. These are bad, these are weak writing, etc. And I'm guilty as charged. So, I'm on another polishing run - I was lining one up anyway, but this time its with vengeful purpose. I'm murdering adverbs. I'm having fun murdering adverbs. It's on like the Red Wedding. I'm a Lannister cutting through Starks with gay abandon.

   Is this write? Should I be taking so much joy in this polishing run? Mass murdering words? It's hilarious fun! Good thing I'm tempering it with getting stuck into part two - I WROTE A PAGE, YAY ME! Though... it's a bit of a hard slog.

   But here goes the plan. Write a page, spill lots of blood. More pages, more bloodshed. But its write a page from the very last chapter first; and I think I'm going to be writing The Ways Out more or less backwards. I think its for the best, but if you've gotten into my writing, or are getting into it, you have or will be acquainted with the roughness I'll put characters through.

   What can I say? Having gone through the wringer, I associate with going through the wringer, and this one's by far worse than any of the fight scenes in TSH. I had no idea I would one day sit down to write a zero deaths story, but I have, and its quite the expression that pain, conflict does come in many forms, even as simple as challenging the self. But conflict with mad sword fighting skillz and Ragnar/Lagertha-level double team bloodletting will always be a fave, so, at least I get to go Mary Queen of Scots' grisly execution on something...

   Though it's made writing harder, because I'm still adverbing, I'm aware of it, and I'm cutting it to pieces as I go. Not sure how this will affect progress on The Ways Out, but valiantly, violently, outwardly adverbally as I just did, I'm fighting on to the betterment of my technique. I think some more of my italics are going next, gotta reserve those for the definite impact of combat.

   And yeah, there's a lot of change already going for 3W, even the beta copy, so any copies you get now do have adverbs and some tautology until I can post the new copy, so I extend my most heartfelt soz for that. But that's what beta copies and constructive criticism are for, testing the waters and improving the mad writing skillz. And that's where I'll leave it for now.

   From the land of McMurderousness (maybe I should do a serial killer story), I bid you farewell, and kill the adverbs. All of them. LEAVE NONE ALIVE!

   The joys of being an author.

   Have a good one!
   T. M.