Writing Riffs

What Word Will You Be?

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• by Lizann Flatt
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I was listening to a keynote address sometime last fall, and the speaker used a particular word several times. It was an unusual word, a nice word, and it made me wonder why she’d chosen to use that word over any number of others that would have expressed a similar sentiment. Somehow that word must have resonated for her. Somehow now that word resonates of her for me.

That word? Astonishing.

Now whenever I come across that word I think of this particular speaker. Astonishing how you can use even a single word to conjur up an image or a perception or a memory of someone.

May your characters resonate with their own astonishing words!

Power to the Proofreaders!

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• by Lizann Flatt
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So there I am doing my proofreading/copy-editing thing, dutifully inserting commas, deleting commas, reigning in the mad usage of dashes and applying CP style when WHAM! I am forced to turn a FIEND into a FRIEND with a single stroke on my mighty keyboard.

Ah, the power…the satisfaction.

Not that anyone will ever know.

(A job well done then.)

Finding a Fix for Fingernails

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• by Lizann Flatt
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One of the hazards of the writing profession is being forever doomed to short fingernails.

Apparently I haven’t been doing enough housework or something this summer because the fingernails on my left hand are really long — I mean two of them are 6 mm long. And I’ve been holding off shortening them because it’s kinda nice for once to have these elegant looking things belong to me. But I’m getting mighty tired of the fingernail induced typos. I’m sure I’ve fixed over 10 errors in this short paragraph alone due to the fact that my nails keep hitting the keys I’m not intending to hit.

But with each day that passes, actually getting out the file or trimmer is seeming more and more like an act of destruction than an act of mere practiciality. So what’s a writer to do?

I keep hoping that having to tie up my kids’ skates again will make short work of them since that’s usually good for snapping off even two short ones at a crack, easy. But so far no go, and I’ve been skate tying for a month already (that in itself is a scary statment but I won’t go there).

Maybe now that the start of school is impending I’d better step up the work cleaning the house. Meanwhile, guess I’ll just let spellcheck clean up my documents.