Day three. The day. Women of the Apocalypse has gone on a terrific run and I bet a win could give it a little more juice. Just a little more. Women of the Apocalypse was up for Best Work (Other – a category reserved for anthologies) and Best Short (for Eileen‘s Pawns Dreaming of Roses).
I woke on the bathroom floor. I had closed my eyes only for a few minutes. Or six hours.
I ventured from the bathroom and discovered it light outside. Fantastic. Luckily, Billie (my roomie and one of the Apocalyptic 4) hadn’t needed to use the bathroom during the night. Otherwise, she would’ve tripped over my body and probably shrieked thinking I was dead (either that or panicking and deciding to dissolve my body in the tub with some HCl).
This past weekend, I attended Keycon, the annual science fiction and fantasy convention held in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This year, it also hosted the Aurora Awards: Canada’s SF/F fan-voted awards. Women of the Apocalypse (of which my story Dues Ex Machina is included) was up for two awards: Best Work English (Other), and Best Short (English) for Pawns Dreaming of Roses.
Back in July 2007, I posted about Excessive Words in my writing. Curse of the Black Swan (an unpublished novel of mine) was rife with excessive words.
My main three were:
still (had 222 of these)
very (had 96 of these)
just (86)
I think it indicates a general weakness in the writing. Or perhaps breaking that rule with fiction writing: eschew verbiage.
That was nearly three years ago. A lot has happened since then (wow, a whole lot).
Anyhow, I’m currently working on Ghost in the Machine, my contribution to the followup anthology to Women of the Apocalypse. I’m knee deep in edits and I went back to that list of excessive words. And while Ghost in the Machine is 25K (1/4 the length of Curse of the Black Swan), you’d think that I’d have 1/4 the words listed above (so 50-60 ‘stills’). This time, I only removed 3 stills. 1 very. 8 justs. Interesting that once you can see your weakness, once it’s pointed out, you can start to correct even before the editing process.
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