Toward the end of July, I took a trip to visit my parents, and since there wasn’t much to do during the day, I edited the August edition of Holiday Heat. I was hoping I’d write more of it, but as of the writing of this post (July 22) I haven’t produced anything new yet.

Oh well. Here’s the six words for August:

• THAT — 644 to start, 572 to finish — removed 72
  • Last month it was 648/611/37. So I used the word about the same amount of times, but I managed to cut out more of them.
• JUST — 197 to start, 177 to finish — removed 20
  • There were about 40 fewer starting instances of “just” this month, compared to last month, but I removed about the same number.
• VERY — 122 to start, 115 to finish — removed 7
  • Most of these were actually forms of “every” or “delivery”.
• WHICH — 62 to start, 60 to finish — removed 2
  • 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 — 76 to start, 71 to finish — removed 5
  • I’m still trying not to use “really” as an adverb, and instead only use it in dialogue. Success has been mixed.
• ONLY – 76 to start, 73 to finish — removed 3
  • I have a tendency to replace “just” with “only”, which is why I do “just” second and “only” sixth.

The cover models for August are already picked out and my artist has them in her hands. I decided that, since she appears twice in the book, I’d make Emily the cover character.

If I can’t do any writing while I’m here at my parents’ house, I’ll probably try to edit September as well, get a jump on things. Then, once September is edited, I can put together the third print volume. If I feel like it. Hopefully I do — I had a good phone interview that will probably lead to a video interview, and I tend to get buoyed by things like that.