Things That Annoy Me Thursday

It annoys me when people use the word "literally" wrong, though I admit that I have done this before.  (Do you ever just annoy yourself?)  For your information, people of the world, the word actually means the opposite of "figuratively".  However, you all (okay, and sometimes me) seem to want to use it as a way to exaggerate, thus losing its true and wonderful meaning somewhere along the way.  And this is the reason it bothers me; the word is such a powerful one when used correctly.  For example, if you say someone was literally laying down on the job, you better mean that that person was horizontal.  You know what? Robert Pattinson does this a lot.  Go listen to one of his interviews and if you watch for it (it's not hard), it will start driving you crazy too.  Literally.  (Sorry.)

Rule Number Seven

I really do believe that you can't grow as a writer unless you grow as a person.  And some of us just have further to go, ok?  For example, take the fact that I am extremely inflexible.  My days are scheduled out in such a way that if someone asks me to go to lunch, I have to say, "I'm sorry.  I can't.  I have to write my blog."  Now, on the one hand, this has given me a large measure of self discipline... but, balance in all things, right? I have now figured out how this is handicapping my story.

It comes down to killing your darlings.  Do you think a person that can not drop a blogging appointment with herself to go to lunch can kill her darlings?  Seriously, who knows what I gave up in my life to write all that darling stuff in the first place.  A date out to lunch, to be sure.  It feels a lot like opening a drain and just letting a portion of your life flow down it.  Sounds very depressing, eh?  Yeah, I thought so too.  Until I figured something out.  We are in a learning process, and the opposite of rule number seven is also true.  As we write, we grow as a person.

I have more motivation than ever to learn to be more flexible, because you just can't write good books when you are unwilling to bend.  I need to treat both life and writing more like clay and less like glass.  It's better when you look at it as something that can come undone and re-molded better than it was the first time. Be willing to change everything if necessary.  It's easy.  Or this is what I try telling myself.

I will say this: I have learned never to spend 20 minutes picking the right word again, unless you are very sure it's the final draft.