An Exercise in Avoidance

I'm a fan of shortcuts.  If I can find a way to shave even a few seconds off of whatever I'm doing, I LOVE it.  If route C gets me home faster than route A, I tend to opt for C most of the time.

I learned the functions of the F Keys on a keyboard years ago (back when we were still working in MS DOS), though I don't remember what most of them do anymore.  When Microsoft came out, I learned their shortcut keys as well.  As an administrative assistant, I "Ctrl V" or "Ctrl P" my way through my day, avoiding the drop down menus unless absolutely necessary.

I'm such a fan of shortcuts that I use the ampersand instead of the correct conjunction in all my correspondence.  I even do that with my blogs.  However, I've been told by numerous writer friends that the ampersand is a HUGE no-no in the writing world.  So after I've written a draft, I have to go through it to replace all those symbols with the actual word.  Yes it would be easier to just type out the word the first time, but that's three keys (maybe four, if I'm using it to start a sentence), instead of just the two it takes otherwise (SHIFT + 7).  In a world of shortcuts, that extra key or two makes all the difference. ;o)

Besides, it doesn't take me that long to fix them in my documents after the fact, because I just hit the "Ctrl H" shortcut to replace all of them at once.  On a 50,000 word document, that's a HUGE time-saver!

My predilection for the curlicue symbol got me thinking recently of a way to challenge myself: I've decided not to use that particular connecting word--or it's shortcut counterpart--throughout this entire blog.

Exercises like this can help your writing by making you think in unusual ways.  I've heard other writers talk about going through their WIPs, looking for over-used words.  I guess that's kind of what I've done here.

It's been quite challenging I must say.  While in the process of writing this blog's draft, I found myself pausing each time I'd hit that symbol key.  Sometimes it was to correct it by replacing it with the actual word, but others, just the act of typing it stopped me; so intent was I to avoid that word today. 


It's funny how stilted the writing was at first.  I was so intent on making my first draft free of the conjunction, that I kept losing track of what I wanted to say.  But as all writers know, it's not about writing, it's about REVISING.  So I finally allowed myself to let the symbol flow freely, only fixing it later in revisions.  It wasn't easy to write the blog without using either the word or the symbol--so prevalent is it in our vocabulary--but now that it's done, I don't think anyone would know that was my intent. Well, if I hadn't stated it earlier, that is.

That's a good lesson in my other writing as well, as I've been told by numerous authors.  I need to allow myself to write what comes out; to let the organic process take over.  Then worry about polishing it up on the second or third drafts.

So I hope you enjoyed today's blog, including my little experiment.  Tell me what kinds of odd little exercises have you tried to help your writing along?