I don’t generally do a lot of writing activities on Saturdays, but last Saturday I had to wake up early to take my kid to urgent care (nothing serious) so I figured I’d kill some time before going to the theater (I have an annual subscription — worth every penny) by doing the third draft of the May edition of Holiday Heat. As I’ve mentioned in the past, draft 1 is the first compiled version of the book, draft 2 is the one where I make any substantial edits and fixes, draft 3 is the one where I do the six words, and draft 4 is the one I upload to Amazon. Here’s the six words for May:

• THAT — 703 to start, 622 to finish — removed 81
  • May is a long one, which explains why there are so many instances of “that”.
• JUST — 234 to start, 198 to finish — removed 36
  • This includes uses of the word “adjust” and “adjustment”, so it’s not wholly accurate.
• VERY — 111 to start, 106 to finish — removed 5
  • Most of these were actually forms of “every” or “delivery”.
• WHICH — 95 to start, 84 to finish — removed 11
  • Removing “which” is hard, because I usually replace it with “that”, “just”, or “only”, all of which are words I’m trying to use less often. It’s annoying.
• REALLY — 88 to start, 78 to finish — removed 10
  • I’m still trying not to use “really” as an adverb, and instead only use it in dialogue. I’m getting better, but I’m not perfect yet. In May I used it as an adverb more times than I’d like, but it fits my writing style so I’m loath to change it.
• ONLY – 92 to start, 83 to finish — removed 9
  • I have a tendency to replace “just” with “only”, which is why I do “just” second and “only” sixth.

My next step for May is to put the book into the Kindle Creator app and turn it into a manuscript so I can create a pre-order page. Fortunately that won’t take a terribly long time; unfortunately it will still take more time than I’d like to spend. Oh well.