The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly in the Plain

Ugh, I must say I feel like Eliza Dolittle right now as I weed through my manuscript in search of extraneous thes, ands, ofs, thens, etc. Oh the list seems to go on forever and this reference-although I love the movie My Fair Lady-is not made on a positive note. I’m not Eliza after she learns to gracefully pronounce her R’s and A’s. I’m the Eliza that makes a jumbled mess of her words when she speaks, or at least I feel that way.

I’m asking myself right now why I’m such a wordy person. I’m even writing a blog about being wordy and how much it aggravates me. I was writing this current manuscript in the midst of pre-edits on my Irish novella and funny enough, I remember thinking that if I ever contracted this latest manuscript it would be a pain to pre-edit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about the contract, but it all goes back to that importance of knowledge. I remember thinking then that I wish I had known about pre-edits before I ever wrote a manuscript. But that’s life isn’t it? We are always learning something and applying it. And most of the time, we are learning something after we already made our mistakes and then realize how valuable it is to be learning what we’ve learned. That’s life.

Take Eliza Doolittle for example. If she had just learned to speak well from the start, perhaps she might of met a nice man and not been forced to spend her days selling flowers in the street. She might have had her own shop. But then we would have missed out on the highly engaging musical detailing her story. And of course, we would have missed out on Professor Henry Higgins and his blasted shoes.

Well, in an attempt to cut short the wordiness, I’ll end here and wish you all happy writing this week!

Filed under: Toni Kelly, Writer's Life