According to "officials" who are supposed to know, it takes anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months to develop a habit. Of course they claim a lot of different variables such as personality and type of habit you are trying to establish.
While I'm not sure about how long it takes to set a habit I do know it takes much longer to break or get rid of it.
Tonight while sitting at Sonic, sipping on my blue coconut slush while son was at piano lessons (as is my habit) I started pondering the habits of writers.
Here's a couple I've noticed...
Using the same word...a lot. For a long time, I used to use "that" all the time. For a while it was "just" or some other word that didn't belong. It took quite a while to weed these out of my writing though they occasionally sneak back in.
I use ellipses...a lot. And most of the time, I really don't need them. I just do it and sometimes I use them improperly. I promise to do better. Swear...
And, I start sentences with "and" more than I should. I need to work on that too.
Those are several of my more annoying habits.
However, I do have one good writing habit at least. I write every day except the weekends. And, actually, I do write blog posts on Sunday so it's only Saturday.
On Saturdays, I generally work on the submissions for Abandoned Towers and plan out my writing for the week ahead.
What about you? Got any annoying writerly habits? Or what about any positive writing habits? Share them with us and we'll conquer them together.
6 comments:
From a positive point of view, I'm well organized and productive, so that helps, even though my day job prevents me from writing as much as I would like.
But--you use "and" to start sentences and I use "but"--I tend to focus too much on the eyes in my writing: they glance, they gaze, they bore into people, etc. When my publisher first received my Little Shepherd manuscript, she actually highlighted them. That put it into perspective for me, and I've tried since then to limit focusing on eyes so much.
Cheryl
That, just, started, began,
All words I need to cut out of my vocabulary.
Putting commas in the wrong spot and not in the right spot.
Hmm sounds like a good list to me, although I'm sure ther are a few more.
For those repeated words and phrases...I use AutoCrit.
It's really cool. They have a free version that checks for repeated words and phrases. You can post up to 800 words of text up to 5 times a day without charge.
The paid version does more and gives you bigger blocks of text.
If you sign up for their email editing course they send you a code for a discount at the end of the lessons.
You can find it at www.autocrit.com and no I don't get anything from them. :-)
Good post. I definitely tend to use certain phrases over and over again, but I will definitely check out autocrit.com Sounds very valuable.
One bad habit I have is avoidance. If I'm stuck with a chapter or a scene, I'll do just about anything to not sit down and fix it until I have it worked out in my head first. You can usually tell this by how clean my house is. The cleaner the house, the less I'm writing. Fortunately, my house is a wreck at the moment. I am going to work on just writing through the tough times though, not letting myself get so blocked.
From a positive point of view, I'm well organized and productive, so that helps, even though my day job prevents me from writing as much as I would like.
But--you use "and" to start sentences and I use "but"--I tend to focus too much on the eyes in my writing: they glance, they gaze, they bore into people, etc. When my publisher first received my Little Shepherd manuscript, she actually highlighted them. That put it into perspective for me, and I've tried since then to limit focusing on eyes so much.
Cheryl
That, just, started, began,
All words I need to cut out of my vocabulary.
Putting commas in the wrong spot and not in the right spot.
Hmm sounds like a good list to me, although I'm sure ther are a few more.
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