Progress, I think

I got back to editing my manuscript this weekend -- after a very unscheduled "break" that lasted about two weeks. As I noted in an earlier post, my greatest foe in this process is the adverb. I used to think of these words as friendly little helpers. Schoolhouse Rock is probably to blame for that. "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly get your adverbs here" was always one of my favorites. I can still see Father, Son and Lolly selling adverbs, asking people to "bring in their old, worn out adjectives" so that they could be fitted with Lolly's "special -ly attachment" to convert them into brand new adverbs.

Turns out, far from making a sentence better, they tend to weaken a statement.

I still hold to my previous statement that there is still a place for them, though. I won't get rid of every adverb in my book. Problem is, I'm not at all sure which ones to keep.

After a weekend of combing through 500 pages of text, deleting most of the little modifiers as I came across them, I took a look at the final product.

They were still there.

Thing is, I can't help myself. Looking at them one-at-a-time, I got rid of as many as I thought I could, but I kept quite a few, too. Not that many, I figured, just the ones that needed to be there. Really needed to be there.

Then I go back and check, thinking I must have left in seven or eight in the entire manuscript -- at most. And what did I find? Well, let's just say I stopped counting after 20. Now I have to start the process all over again, and this time I have to be merciless.

In other news, I broke my own vow yesterday. I went out and bought a copy of "Swann's Way" -- the first volume of Marcel Proust's giant master-work -- approximately 5 years and two weeks ahead of schedule. Of course, the damn thing is so long I'll probably be working on it well past my 40th birthday anyway, so I'm just getting an early start.