I’ve had a manuscript sitting in a folder for a while, a long while. Sometimes a writer knows a problem exists in the story, but can’t quite identify it. Every now and then I’d get the manuscript out and dip into various chapters seeking clues. Then one day last summer, it came to me. I’d written the novel in the first person. This was the problem. So I revised the first three chapters into the third person. Then set it aside for a while. Came back to it. Re-read the revised pages and got pretty excited.
It all just felt better. Because I have other writing projects going on, I haven’t until this brand new year, worked much on the somewhat tedious rewrite. Now that I am, one of my writer’s ticks has become way too visible to me. I am in love with gerunds.
Think of gerunds as verbs masquerading as nouns. For example: Revising a manuscript can be tedious. Revise — that’s a verb. You add “ing” to the end, stick it in the position of the subject or object of a sentence and voila! Noun.
This isn’t a bad thing all by itself. But it gets old fast. I think sometimes I back into ideas as I write and the gerund helps push me forward. It’s fun to take some time with them in this revision, take a second look at the broader paragraph or page and get rid of the ones that weaken rather than serve the prose.
I wonder. Will telling myself that revising is fun make it so?
The image above is the cover of what used to be considered one of the best books on good concise writing, “The Elements of Style.” I hear it has fallen out of favor, but I still poke my head in it now and then when my own work gets sloppy.
Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now 