I’m Writing

Write for you. 

I recently got so caught up in wanting to make every piece of writing I made perfect and to be as good as everyone else's, that I lost what made my writing, and all writing, good. 

It’s the fact that it is your writing. 

Use your own experiences for similes and metaphors. Put yourself into the scene you’re writing and describe what you see, hear, taste, feel. If you find yourself getting bored with your own work as you write it, chance is your audience is going to find it boring as well. This is when you’ve most likely started to write to meet a deadline or to fit some other outside standard that isn’t your own. 

Don’t get me wrong: sometimes you just have to get that chapter finished or meet that deadline, and it’s okay to push yourself as a writer and strive to do better in certain areas. The important thing to keep in mind is that without you in your writing, the words become bland and boring. When I remember this and stop writing on autopilot and start writing my writing again, I immediately feel the change in my mindset and see it in my work. 

Quite recently, I came to the painful realization that I over use the word “just” in almost every piece of writing- even posts for this blog. 

I am aware of the thought process when I write these items. It’s often that placing the “just” in that certain spot made it sound more human or conversational, and I wasn’t wrong, but that didn’t make my writing better. It made it wishy washy and as a result, not as entertaining to read. 

I soon began taking out all the extra “just”s, and right away I noticed in an increase in the quality of my writing. I would read the sentence as I had written it, with the “just” in place, and would then take it out. What I usually found was that if I were to leave the sentence as is, it would be okay and still passible, but it wasn’t as good as it could be. Because when I took out that one word, suddenly everything, the whole paragraph, flowed better and put the reader into the scene instead of just telling them about it. 

Now that I know that I have a tendency to over use this word, I double check before I add it in. In the last paragraph I used the word “just”, and I do believe that it fits there and the sentence is better with it. But most of the time, I find myself cutting it. 

My question for you is are there any words or phrases, or even grammatical tools like commas or semi colons, that you over use? You may not think you abuse it at the time, but when you go back and read your writing and really pay attention, something may jump out at you and you may find your “just”. 

It’s okay to have a “just”, I’m sure everyone does; what’s important is that you are aware of it and remember to ask yourself if you really need it or if there are any better solutions you could go with. 

My multiple unfinished pieces: You could finally finish me!

Me:

Me:

Me: Yeah, you're right. I really should get on that...

My Brain: Hey look! YouTube exists!

Me: Well it's hard to argue with that.