I usually get my best fiction work done early in the morning, but one morning last month I decided that, instead of sitting at my computer and stewing, I’d go run some errands. I needed a new passport photo, and a gift card for someone whose birthday was coming up. When I came home I had a few things to do on my computer — some emails had come in that needed attention — and after that I figured I’d finish up the six words for the June edition of Holiday Heat.

• THAT — 613 to start, 552 to finish — removed 61
• JUST — 232 to start, 169 to finish — removed 63
  • That’s a lot of “just” to get rid of in a book that’s only about 47,000 words.
• VERY — 146 to start, 142 to finish — removed 4
  • Most of these were actually forms of “every” or “delivery”.
• WHICH — 76 to start, 72 to finish — removed 4
  • 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. Also, I used “which” in dialogue and specific echoed descriptive text, so there were lots of places I didn’t want to take it out of.
• REALLY — 80 to start, 68 to finish — removed 12
  • I’m still trying not to use “really” as an adverb, and instead only use it in dialogue. Success has been mixed.
• ONLY – 52 to start, 49 to finish — removed 3
  • I have a tendency to replace “just” with “only”, which is why I do “just” second and “only” sixth.

My next step for June is to put the book into the Kindle Creator app and turn it into a manuscript so I can create a pre-order page. My artist has the cover model choices for June; she just has to put together the actual file. Meanwhile, I need to combine April, May, and June into a single document so I can put out Volume 2 in print at the end of June.