During my weekend writing expedition, I learned how to choose the absolute best word possible to convey my point.  I also learned I use far, FAR too many adverbs.  One of the seminar leaders smacked me upside the back of the head when I wrote, “He walked quickly across the room.”  She barked, “NEVER USE ADVERBS!” in a tone that was reminiscent of my Jewish mother, if my mom were, indeed, Jewish.

“QUICKLY?!  Who writes like that?  I can think of over 100 words to replace ‘quickly’.  How about ‘minced’ or ‘scooted’ or ‘ran willy-nilly’?”

I finally settled on “He skittered across the room.”  The seminar leader appeared to be appeased, but it may have been a ruse.

I’m desperately trying to write this blog without the use of adverbs.  (Ignore the aforementioned desperately, please.)  It’s difficult.  I use adverbs as a crutch.  Sort of like when Monica Seles would hit tennis balls and use that high-pitched hyena scream.  It wasn’t necessary, but she’d do it anyway.

The writing class was about finding, nay, searching for, the perfect word.  Words like “collide” or “persnickety” don’t just happen, you have to go looking for them.  She took a random poll to find out what some of our favorite words were.  I told her the term I love the most … the one that fell out of the sky and into my lap years ago … is “riveting”.  I use it almost every day … for both powers of good and evil.  If Paris Hilton overuses, “That’s hot”, then my mantra is “How riveting!”

From now on, I’m going to strive to pick better words.  I will be methodic and careful in my choices.  After all, words are just the alphabet put in purposeful order.  Reading back over some of my previous posts, I can see where I went wrong.  Those blogs seem so bor … er, mundane.  So trite.  Dare I say, “non-riveting”?

Clearly, this class helped break me of some bad habits.

Crap.