Mary J. McCoy-Dressel

I didn’t make it for week 9 in the 52-Week Blog Challenge. Participants wrote, “Words That Make Me Go Ick.” Through the week, I jotted down some icky words with the intention of participating. Before I knew it my calendar said Friday. Ick! Time got away from me, so this week I’m not a participant. If you’re curious as to what makes other authors go “ICK,” you can check it out here: #MFRWauthor

How The Week Got Away From Me:

Writing is my priority–my full time job. This has been a busy week. I’m writing book two in the Canyon Junction: Hearts in Love series, which is a huge challenge. Then, my first round of edits came back for Lassoing the Last Dance in the Double Dutch Ranch Series. I flew through edits quickly, but my editor pointed to a word I might use too often to begin a sentence. She was correct and I thought I had worked on not using it in this book. WRONG.

I searched and changed the sentences beginning with said word. I’m not going to point out this word to you. 🙂 Not being snarky, but if you’re a reader of my books, I certainly don’t want you to be distracted when you come across this word. Haha, you won’t find it anyway at the beginning of a sentence now.  🙂 Well, not in Lassoing the Last Dance.

She also pointed out– I might use “darlin’ and sweetheart” too much. Most of them are gone now. I admit, I miss having my cowboys call their heroine, darlin’, so I kept the ones I couldn’t live without. Other times, it didn’t matter to remove them. I found twenty-three “darlin’s” in a more than 95K word manuscript and a few more “sweethearts.” I’ve been accused of overusing another word in love scenes in a book. I’ve since revised it, but the review still remains. It’s okay, because the review was still positive.

Some of these endearments are used when in conversation with a child, especially sweetheart or sweetie, and now most are gone. I read through my manuscript before sending it back to my editor, and you know what? I didn’t miss those words in the dialog where they had been removed.

I love my characters to be endearing toward one another. This must be why I overuse these words. Once I get into the story and in the heads of the characters, they are no longer characters in a book, but they are a part of my life, part of me. They live in my heart and soul. They are real people. I’m happy someone pointed out these flaws to me.

Learning in this business never ends, and I continue to learn more with each new book I write and read.

It’s beginning to look like publishing Lassoing the Last Dance is within sight. I still need to make an appointment with my book formatter, but I can’t until I get my manuscript back after my editor proofreads. Maybe she’ll find another word I use too much, and I’ll have to start all over again with removing them. Oh, it’s so time-consuming, and when it gets so close to publication, it’s exciting and all I want to do is freak out about hitting send, not spend time searching and rewriting. Eww, talk about ICK!  🙂  In the end of course, this is the only way to make the book…swoon-worthy?  ❤

Happy reading!

Thanks to Pixabay for the last two images. I’ve had the other one so long, I can’t be sure where it came from.