My big ol' but

(Note: This post was originally titled "I have a problem with my but" -- I was a little worried about what Google would bring. Even now, I am a bit concerned.)

Last week, I asked if anyone had experience with AutoCrit or any other editing software. I wanted a program that would flag if I had repeated words or phrases and similar glitches because, frankly, after eight drafts, I am just a tad bit overfamiliar with my manuscript. And overfamiliarity breeds typos.

I signed up for AutoCrit ($47 for a 1 year membership) and ran a few chapters through. With the wizard, you cut and paste a single chapter in (or up to 5000 words at a time) and select the report you want to run.   I selected the report on overused words (-ly adverbs, just, that, conjunctive phrases, was construction and so on) on one chapter and noticed the conjunctive beginning box was checked. When I looked through the highlighted, I found a whole bunch of buts. I'd never noticed this glitch in my writing before so I went back to my manuscript and highlighted every but in there.

597.

At first I wasn't sure whether it was a problem, so I went to Strunk and White and asked them. As usual, they sniffed down their noses and said "The too frequent use of but as a conjunction leads to the fault (of) loose sentences. Loose sentences are common in easy, unstudied writing. The danger is that there may be too many of them."

S**t, if you'll pardon the pun.

I am now much better friends with yet, however, although, and except.

But that's OK.

I blanked

We've all got our little words and phrases that crop up in our writing over and over again, those writing weaknesses that we don't notice, but cringe when someone points them out. I found mine. And boy, did I cringe.

My weakness: I blanked. By that, I mean that I overuse the phrasing "I *ed" such as I looked, I walked, I started, I moved, I gathered. My book is in first person, and while there is no way to completely avoid that phrasing, it is not the most effective way to convey the action that is taking place. As was pointed out to me very recently, too much of it leads to a boring step-by-step run down of what's going on.

I am now enternally grateful to Gary Corby, who wrote a life-saving post on Advanced Searching in Microsoft. With the help of his post, I was able to highlight every instance of "I blanked" -- all 745 of them. (Yeah. Major cringing going on here.) I am well on the way to fixing these (only 650 now!) and my writing is much stronger for it.

On a side note, out of 10+ beta readers, not one commented on that. But a publishing professional did, so guess who I'm listening to.