My husband laughs when I say things like that. Sigh. He has reasons.
I've noticed certain obsessive habits while writing this round of books, and especially in the edits for my fiction book. This is how one obsession started: I was advised by several well meaning writers about the dangers of "dialogue tags," "ly" words, and using anything but "said" if you had to use a tag.
The result of this was: I wrote an entire book without using more than maybe two saids.
Yep. Me and those action tags became good friends. (Smile, nod, shrug. I've got them down.) And I prefered it that way. I saw other writers using "said" and worse "something besides said" and it stuck out to me. I'd plucked them out of my own writing and now they were like red flags in any story I read.
And then my editor got a hold of my book. Bless her.
She gently began inserting "said" and other dialogue tags into my book. I struggled over each one. A single word, and it was crazy how crazy it made me. Then she pointed out my over abundant use of questions in my novel. I read a few articles about using questions in the narrative, discovered most of mine were adding to the dreaded "show don't tell" issue and began cutting them all out. My editor again gently reminded me that some questions were good. Some were needed.
I'm discovering this part of me I hadn't realized could be so obsessive. I don't really have all the answers. I feel torn between opinions and ideas about how to write and what makes writing good. I'm starting to think that maybe it isn't so much about not ever using something, but learning about what is, what it does, and deciding for yourself if and where you want it in your book. It's time to try harder to really understand this language I use to create stories. It's the language I've spoken my whole life and so much comes by instinct, but when it's time to edit, I need to make sure I understand the medium I've been using. What I want for my future books is control of where I put words, and knowledge of why I put them in.
The last few weeks, I've said hello to the word "said" again. I will venture to say I'm finding my balance. At least in writing. In the rest of my life, well, that's a whole other struggle. But I did make dinner and do the dishes last night. So progress . . .
