I don't know about you, but I'm really bad at overusing certain words when I'm writing. They tend to creep up on me, and before I know it, I've used "just" 10 times in one page. Erm...yikes!
Over the years, I've learned to keep a list of my "frequent offenders", or the words I find myself overusing from manuscript to manuscript. When I start editing, I pull out my list, and search for these words in my manuscript. I go through each and every use and remove as many instances as possible by deleting that word or rewriting the sentence. I also add "telling" words and passive voice to my list (things like it is/was, she is/was, he is/was, feels, etc), and then search those out and rewrite as often as possible.
I'm not going to lie to you, this is a time consuming, painful process. But having a polished manuscript at the end is so worth it! Your writing will be much stronger when you eliminate passive voice and those overused words.
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