#WritingLifeMonthly #Day26 I’m never one to info dump. I like sprinkling info in little nibbles, even if they come with a bite of chili pepper also sprinkled with them.

#WritingLifeMonthly #Day25 I wonder what’s denser: my paragraphs or my Bluesky posts. I’m guilty of both.

#WritingLifeMonthly #Day24 I like hacking away at the useless sentences, but I have to be honest, I’m the one who put them there in the first place. Thank goodness for editing.

#WritingLifeMonthly #Day23 Clichés – I try to avoid them. I’m not always aware when I’m in one bc they’re increasing every day.

#WritingLifeMonthly #Day22 Not a problem – I’m not a poet and I absolutely know it.

#WritingLifeMonthly #Day21 I enjoy snappy dialogue. I hope my readers do, too.

#WritingLifeMonthly #Day20 Rhythm! Repetition! I’m on it! Two-thirds of the way through the month and I’m realizing all those things I learned in school stuck. Of course, I have yet to use trig even once.

#WritingLifeMonthly #Day19 Gosh, I hope my sentences have plenty of variety. It may be crazy old-school of me, but all those sentences I diagrammed in middle school made an impression.

#WritingLifeMonthly #Day18 I love the vivid descriptions! I’ve spent my last four novels honing those images.

#WritingLifeMonthly #Day17 I use Word’s Read Aloud feature. It’s a great way to catch everything from typos to proof that the author [hey, that’s me] is babbling.

#WritingLifeMonthly #Day16 I trust the reader ridiculously, maybe even too much. Is that okay?

#WritingLifeMonthly #Day15 I remember having this conversation in Newspaper class in my sophomore year of high school. #EasterSunday

#WritingLifeMonthly #Day14 Well, now, all I can think about are ‘felt’ and ‘noticed.’

#WritingLifeMonthly #Day13 In my opinion, there’s way too much inner dialogue. Most of my novels include isolated characters, so it is a pitfall of their solitude.

#WritingLifeMonthly #Day12 After I edit my entire manuscript for excess ‘hads,’ I do another loop through to focus on my showing.

#WritingLifeMonthly #Day11 Because the conversation is happening in my head as I think about, write, and edit dialogue so I know who is talking, I do get feedback from beta readers to clarify that it makes sense to others, too. (Damn my cursed subtlety!)

#WritingLifeMonthly #Day10 I never use the word ‘said.’ I just don’t.

#WritingLifeMonthly #Day9 The hardest part of today’s task is identifying sentences that aren’t awkward.

#WritingLifeMonthly #Day8 I’m good with my pronouns (having them beaten into me in elementary and middle school), so I find myself struggling with them when people prefer a plural pronoun. I respect their pronouns, but I get tripped up by those early grammar rules.

#WritingLifeMonthly #Day7 I do include filler words in dialogue to make conversation sound more natural. Of these three, ‘just’ may be my downfall.