By Rich Ritter: The New Voice of the
American West
After completion of the second draft of my
first novel, I invited seven people to find errors and suggest revisions. I
have never employed this technique again—which is a discussion for a future
post—but one of the readers did make an important discovery. When she handed
the three-ring binder back to me, I said, “Thank you. Did you remember to mark
any errors or suggestions with a red pen?”
She politely answered, “I did.” Then,
after an uncomfortable pause, she added, “You sure like to use certain words an
awful lot.”
Confused, I asked, “What do you mean by
certain words?”
She glanced down at her sandals. “You used
the words ‘shimmering’ and ‘thumped’ a gazillion times. After a while I made a
game of it and started counting them.”
Instantly flummoxed, I stuttered, “A
game…of it? Did…did you…you mark them with a red pen?”
She peered straight into my eyes. “No, I
just counted them…a—” I interrupted, “Yeah, I know. A gazillion times.”
I thanked her again and began the
ten-minute drive home. As I crossed the bridge and headed into the roundabout,
I tried to remember when I had used these particular words. I could think of a
few examples, but certainly not a gazillion. She had to be exaggerating. After
parking the car, I hurried into the house and began an inspection of the
manuscript. I stopped on page three and thought to myself: There’s no way I’m
going to read over 130,000 words looking for “thumped” and “shimmering.” I
slumped into my chair, dejected and nearly beaten. Then, after a moment of
abject panic, an epiphany emerged from somewhere inside my addled brain.
I turned on the computer, clicked on the
file for my novel, and quickly found what I was looking for: a copy I had saved
in PDF format. I opened the file, pulled down the “Edit” window, and clicked on
“Advanced Search.” I carefully typed in “thumped,” checked the box for “Whole
words only,” and, with my hand shaking a bit, hit “Search.” Within moments, a
long list— actually a very long list—appeared with every instance of the word,
including a portion of the sentence for easy reference. I read the list, which
took a while, and concluded that she was right: I had used the darn word a gazillion
times. The results were even more frightening for “shimmering.”
Over the next week, with the assistance of
my dog-eared copy of Rodale’s Synonym Finder, I reduced the occurrences of
“thumped” from a gazillion to around seven. My treatment of “shimmering” was a
different story. Because I loved this word so much, I ended up using it only
twice—both times in the climatic paragraph of the novel, in the evocative
phrase “shimmering paladin.” This may sound extreme to you, but I’ve never
regretted my decision.
____________________________
Rich
Ritter is the son of a father who worked in the aerospace industry and
a mother who taught first grade. Born in the Midwest during the Korean War, his
family moved to California before he began the first grade. He attended second
grade through high school in Anaheim, and then California Polytechnic State
University in San Luis Obispo. He completed his thesis year in Denmark, and
while there met Kristine from Alaska—in the balcony of the Royal Danish Ballet
during a performance of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. He moved to Alaska and
married Kris a few years later. The author and his wife have two sons. Book
titles:
Toil Under the Sun: A Novel, Heart of Abigail: A Lyric Novella
of Juneau, Douglas and Treadwell, Nor Things To Come: A Trilogy of the American
West, Book One:
The Perilous Journey Begins, Book
Two:
Gathering of the Clans, Book Three should be available in
6 months (or thereabouts). His social Media links:
http://richritterbooks.com/
