I finally produced a new story last month — it was only 2158 words, but it cut the number of stories I had to do down to 30. Here’s hoping I can knock the rest out sooner rather than later.

Anyway, here’s the six words for September:

• THAT — 749 to start, 625 to finish — removed 124
  • Last month it was 644/572/72. So I used the word a lot, but I also removed a bunch. This month is also longer than last month, so there are reasons for having more thats.
• JUST — 254 to start, 217 to finish — removed 37
  • Just was a hard one to cut this month.
• VERY — 126 to start, 112 to finish — removed 14
  • Most of these were actually forms of “every” or “delivery”.
• WHICH — 80 to start, 74 to finish — removed 6
  • 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. My goal is to not have more than one “which” per printed page once I put out the print version.
• REALLY — 84 to start, 72 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 – 78 to start, 73 to finish — removed 5
  • I have a tendency to replace “just” with “only”, which is why I do “just” second and “only” sixth. And whenever I try to replace “only”, it usually ends up being “just” or “that”. Conundrum.

I’m still not sure who’s going to be the cover character for September, but I’m leaning toward Angie, since she appears a couple of times. It would also be a good month for Emily, who appears twice, but she’s already been on a cover. I should probably figure it out soon though.

In job-related news, the good phone interview I had in July turned into nothing at all — the morning I was going to have my second interview, they called and told me the role had been changed and moved to India. However, I’m writing this post on August 24, and I had three phone interviews last week, one of which led to another one coming up next week with a panel of interviewers, so I’m a little optimistic. But just a little.