Redundancy

Becoming more effective in your writing can require getting rid of redundant words. Sometimes I describe in a flourish of superfluous language, my characters talk in meandering waffle…and it all gets a little too much. Today I’m taking a piece of writing I did in my blog from 17th February 2013 and am cutting it down, to make it more succinct, more effective. This is an experiment really, to see if my writing is improved by paring it back, being more mindful of what I include and what I remove.

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Creating fantasy

This process of writing a novel is a totally fascinating experience: watching the ebb and flow of my creativity and motivation, working out what time of day I am most productive, learning how to be flexible with my routine, realising the importance of keeping some way of recording flashes of inspiration with me at all times, spending more time with my characters than my friends (or at least it feels that way!) and having it dawn on me that a novel contains a hell of a lot of words…and I have to write them all!

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