Hold Your Horses!

I have a mental file cabinet filled with cliches. Cliches like: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink" and "You're barking up the wrong tree." There are hundreds of others.

I learned these cliches as I was growing up in the same fashion as I learned to speak. They are part of my rich vocabulary. Too much a part! Sometimes I have blurted out one of these gems with embarrassing consequences, like when I am in a business meeting with individuals whose native language is not English. Somehow my polished argument loses its gloss when cliches are thrown in.

The same is true in writing, though the types of cliches are different. They are written redundancies that have achieved common usage. Here are some examples:

the reason was because - the word "because" is sufficient
on account of the fact that - see above
free gift - a gift should be free!
few in number - doesn't few imply a number?
circular in shape - doesn't circular imply a shape?
disappear from sight - what else are you going to disappear from?
in my opinion I think - isn't your opinion what you think?

Grammarians refer to these as tautologies or pleonisms. To me, these are redundancies that have achieved cliche status in common writing. Edit them for polished writing.

To Edit, To Be Edited

This morning I finished editing a nonfiction book proposal. This project came to me the same day I was told by an editor that the first chapter of a fiction book proposal I submitted needed to be reworked.

The timing of these events has my inner voice (you know, the one that talks to you all the time) talking to me about editing in general.

I genuinely like being edited. My ego is not dented by either line editing or copy editing. It's part of the process to make something good into something great. What I don't like is being rewritten. If rewriting is required, let me do it.

What I've discovered in my career is if someone thinks a sentence or paragraph needs rewriting the actual problem may have occurred in a previous sentence or paragraph. Their reading progression stumbled for some reason and it is my job to fix that uneven road.

Today I am rubbing my hands with glee as I prepare to rewrite the beginning of my novel. Onward!