Links to Writing & Marketing Blog Posts PLUS A little bit about the word IT!

Last night, I found a paragraph in my work-in-progress with five references to “it.” Dang, I thought I wrote better than that. The sentences took a bit of tweaking. Here’s the before and after:

BEFORE: “I know it’s good training to run without a watch, trusting your instincts and listening to your body, but it drives me nuts when I don’t wear it. That’s the way it was without the ring. I put it back on.”

AFTER: “I know it’s good training to run without a Garmin, trusting your instincts and listening to your body, but not wearing a watch drives me nuts. That’s the way I felt without the ring. I put it back on.”

Improving sentence clarity is much like training for a race. Train/edit. Train/edit. Train/edit. I have a race tonight, so I need to go for a short run to loosen up. In the meantime, check your writing and . . . 

• Use active voice
• Use Parellel Construction
• Choose Action Verbs over forms of Be
• Avoid Unlcear Pronoun references
• Avoid Shifts in Person
• Avoid noun strings 

And watch out for the pronoun “it.”

Happy writing & running, Kathy

~*~

If you missed my writing & marketing tweets and retweets yesterday, here they are again: 

1. Sara Barton Mysteries: How to Write a Solid Review of Fiction http://ow.ly/nLl85
2. The Other Side of the Story: Revealing a Character's Past Without Falling Into Backstory http://ow.ly/nLvUx
3. Wordplay: Helping Writers Become Authors: 8 Promises You’re Making to Readers—and Then Breaking http://ow.ly/nLw1A
4. Is it FAIR for Authors to Review Other Authors? Do We Ruin the Magic? | Kristen Lamb's Blog http://ow.ly/nLw5A
5. I Just Turned Down a Publishing Deal with Amazon | Aubrey Rose http://ow.ly/nMeaA
6. Novel Rocket: Are There Rules for Writing Seat-of-the-Pants? http://ow.ly/nMeha
7. 5 Quick Fixes for a Story that Goes Wrong http://ow.ly/nMemL
8. Why Narrative Family History Is Best - BLOG - Stories To Tell Books http://ow.ly/nMeYy
9. Do Indie Authors have a Bad Reputation? | Evelyn Puerto, Author http://ow.ly/nMfdF
10. Expanded Alert at Writer Beware-American Book Publishing / Alexis Press / All Classic Books / Atlantic National Books http://ow.ly/nMfsL
11. Healthcare for the Self-Employed Writer by Michael Cahill http://ow.ly/nMGQX
12. Wordplay: Helping Writers Become Authors: Most Common Mistakes: Is Your Prose Too Complex? http://ow.ly/nNz5C
13. Place Settings by Gregory Frost | Clarion Blog http://ow.ly/ "Without setting, it [the story] was presented in a vacuum.
14. Creative Author Marketing: Beyond the Bookstore | Where Writers Win http://ow.ly/nNzsg
15. 3 Things You Need for a Successful Book - Rachelle Gardner http://ow.ly/nNzwZ
16. Social Media Tools, How to Simplify Your Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner http://ow.ly/nNzBi
17. A Letter From American Booksellers Association's CEO on Current Events in Bookselling | The Passive Voice | http://ow.ly/nNAg6
18. The Book Designer — 4 Must-Know Tips to Reach Your Writing and Publishing Goals http://ow.ly/nNAhX
19. Notes from Tabor Lane http://ow.ly/nNBkj Today's Links to Writing & Marketing Blog Posts PLUS How to Send Your Manuscript to Your Kindle

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