My name is Grey and I am an adverb user.
I've known for a long time now that using adverbs is wrong in prose. That 'shouted loudly' and "Piss off", he said, angrily" are near cardinal sins in the profession. Using these blunt, clumsy adverbs are an addiction I had long ago thought I had conquered.
Alas, it seems that what I have done instead is hidden my addiction to them even from myself. I have merged my aversion to adverbs with the treatise of 'show not tell' creating lines such as "Piss off" he said, waving his arms in the air' I do this a lot and it is only recently that I have realised how wrong I am to do it. These bits of description in dialogue are unnecessary and I hereby vow to remove them, creating a more confident sounding novel that trusts that the readers know what my characters are feeling.
I still have a lot to learn.
In other news, I'm moving on to chapters 25-30 of the novel. 21-24 aren't done yet but I just can't see what's wrong with it, I only know that it's something fundamental. I can't see the paragraphs through the words. I'll go back another time and hopefully the answer will be right there waiting for me and I'll be able to fix it.
Short stories are still all with mags and I'm awaiting responses soon and the Waterstone's competition still hasn't posted my story on the site yet (they post all of the entries, I think).
Right, that's it from me. I'm tired and frustrated and need to relax.
Thanks for reading.
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