A writer minds her adverbs

My agent sent me six pages of editorial suggestions earlier this week, and today I cleared my schedule to spend the entire work day contemplating her edits and revising my manuscript.

What a luxury: to be able to spend the day working on my own writing. Well, it wasn’t actually the whole day. I sat down to my desk just before 9 AM, with the contentment that comes from knowing the kids are at school, the livestock is grazing, the dog has had enough early-morning activity that she’ll doze for a few hours, the dishwasher is running and the kitchen floor is swept. A swept floor is, for me, the mint on the pillow, the symbol that I’ve made it through my morning clean-up list and am done with that part of the day. Even my husband was out at a series of work-related appointments. I was alone in the house with my manuscript and my revisions.

But first I had to do a couple of hours of consulting. Billable hours, you know -- never a good idea to neglect those. The municipal management consultant I work for has a community development plan due in just a few weeks, and I owed her a significant rewrite on the public water and sewer section. So I did that, and when I was done, the dog was staring at me anxiously. “I get paid to write, not to go running with you,” I told her. She stared some more. “We’ll go by noon,” I promised. At 11:45, dog-owner guilt won out over billable hours. Dogs can’t even tell time, I grumbled as I changed into my running clothes, but it’s the dog owner’s code of honor that when you tell your pup you’ll do something by noon, you stick to it.

After a short run, I pulled up my agent’s list of suggestions and opened my manuscript file. And as I read through the pages, I kept thinking, “Wow, do I use a lot of words. Words after words. Words piled on words. Words entangled with words.”

I don’t even use that many different words. My vocabulary is an embarrassment to me. It’s not that I misuse words – it’s that for a journalist, I don’t know very many. On various writing projects this week, I’ve found myself struggling for synonyms for the simplest words: “appealing.” “Wonderful.” “Thrill.” “Delighted.” All positive words, I now notice. Interesting that I seem to have plenty of ways to express negative reactions, but get stuck using the same words over and over again for the good stuff.

As a writer, I believe my greatest editorial flaw is using adverbs. Only recently did I start making myself methodically cross out adverbs. Oops, there’s another one. As I combed through my manuscript today, I was alarmed to note how many adverbs modified every verb and adjective. A business decision was described as “extremely problematic.” A plan was “perfectly reasonable.” A challenge was “enormously frustrating.” Modifiers modifying modifiers.

Finally I stopped deleting and took a moment to think about what the role of adverbs is. To further elucidate, I decided. To clarify the way in which something was done, or was perceived.

And sometimes that’s useful; but more often, it’s superfluous. My husband has a famous expression. Famous within our family, anyway. Once he grew exasperated listening to me give him information and said, “Stop explaining things!” “That’s our problem, isn’t it?” my father later commented. “We’re all such explainers.”

Adverbs explain things, and as Rick suggested, a lot of times those things don’t require further explanation. Familiar as I am with the “show don’t tell” max im, it’s true that I still feel the need to qualify, to use adverbs to further delineate the degree to which a certain description pertains. “extremely.” “Particularly.” “Severely.” “Barely.” “Somewhat.” “Very.””Absurdly.”

Just tell the story, I reminded myself. Show don’t tell. Or, as Strunk and White succinctly say – I mean, as Strunk and White say – “Use nouns and verbs.” Let the things and the actions carry the story along without trying to direct the reader’s interpretation.

If I could do that, and build my vocabulary with some new adjectives, I think I’d find myself to be a much more skilled writer in very little time. I mean, in little time.

So, a writer’s rsolution for today: fewer adverbs. Use nouns and verbs. Ultimately, Rick was right. Oops, I mean, Rick was right. It’s simply a matter of being straightforward. Oops again. It’s a matter of being straightforward. Stop explaining things.