The Librarian Writer

One of great things about Twitter is finding out about cool things. And one of those cool things is Wordle . Wordle turned my manuscript into a visual representation of the most used words. The more often a word is used, the bigger it is. I chose the layout (horizontal), the colors (Chilled Summer), and the font (Teen, of course). I can also look at a full word count list so I know exactly how many times I used the word just (an edit-worthy 82 times!) My characters' names are the largest, which is to be expected. But other words become easy to see that they're over-used and unnecessary. In addition to just , there's: really-55 seems-33 yeah-33 actually-32 finally-26 probably-26 I'm beginning Draft #6, the draft where I'm going through every chapter, scene, and word until it's as perfect as it can be. I've blogged about stop-words that kill the flow of fiction , and when they pop out at me on Wordle, it's worth hitting the Find Next button 26 or 55 or ...

It's the middle of the first week of the year and high time that I declare to the world (or at least myself) what I plan to do in 2011. Like most sane people, I've realized that resolutions are created to be broken. Which is why I'm focusing on goals, not resolutions. Because I'm human, I can control and revise my goals as necessary. But first I have to set them ... My first goal is to complete the 2011 Debut Author Challenge. I posted about this before and I'm excited to read more YA. I read maybe 20 books last year, which is a low number for some but way above what the average American reads in a year. I'd like to read at least 25 books in 2011, with 12 of them guaranteed to be YA. My second goal is to finish my WIP. I'm almost done with Draft #5. I've already had a group of beta readers take a look at it and will probably have fresh eyes look at Draft #6. And then it will be time for the next goal ... Goal Three is to query agents. I've been doi...