Dirty Laundry

Wow it's already May 2. Yesterday hubby and I celebrated 11 years together. Overall it's been pretty good when it comes to us. We've been through some stuff and I'm sure there is stuff to come, but here we are still weathering the storms of marriage.

Thinking about us, kinda got me thinking about writing because that, too, is like a marriage. Sometimes it's awesome and sometimes it sucks that you want to throw it out onto the street with all it's belongings and tell it to fuck off. How many can relate that to their spouse or to their muse?

Granted, I have been in a far longer marriage with writing than I have been with my husband. Oh I think writing and me have been together now for over 20 years. Maybe even longer, I 've kinda lost count. We have this understanding. Sometimes there are things about writing that I don't talk about and it doesn't talk about all of my bad habits either.

So why am I spilling some of our closeted secrets today? Ehh... I opened the windows in the house to air it out so I guess I'm airing out all aspects. I'll let you in on one big secret about hubby.

He folds his dirty clothes before he puts them into the washing machine. (Oh he does his own laundry.) It's only because hubby is a little OCD like that. But I've come to accept it, shake my head, and smile. Cause in a way it's cute. Now if he starts rearranging my spice rack, which he's done before and never again mind you, I'll give him a piece of my mind. The OCD don't work with my spices.

Now of course I have my own bad habits in the marriage. I'm not the neat person in the relationship. My clothes happier is more of a clothes rack until I do laundry. But I do have a few bad habits when I write and when I edit. I'm in the middle of editing a book now and wonder why I get myself into these quandaries, after the fact.

We all have words that we use over and over again. Mine are:

As
Like
Just
Hard
. But

I'm sure there are a couple more my editors will point out, but those are the ones I always have on my list that I tackle before I go into content editing. And in a 450 page manuscript, there are a lot of repetitions.

In my writing process, I tend to overwrite. I know it while I do it and curse myself later, but it's how I write. I think I end up doing it only because I'm reminding myself more about the story and small details so I can take them out later not because I want to rack up the word count.

So that's my bit of dirty laundry and writing secrets for today.

What are yours?