The Mysterious Case of the Adverbs

Tonight I’m doing my last event for a while for 1000 WORDS. It’s virtual and it’s free. More details here.

This spring, I’ll be making appearances in Charlottesville, Baton Rouge, Greensboro, and Baltimore. As always, you can keep track of my events here, and if you’re interested in bringing me to your own event, please contact my speaking agency.

---

Hi friends.

I’ve been finishing up the final final FINAL edits on the novel with the first pass page proof. This is the phase when you get to see the book set in its page design and looking all pretty. It’s starting to feel like a real book.

I can tell I’m really done with this thing because I am genuinely approaching the feeling of never want to look at it again. With the last round of edits which were the copy edits, I was like aw, I don’t want to let it go because I finally figured out how it all works. And with this edit, I’m like wow, take this thing away from me, I’ve said all I have to say.

And yet, I am still finding tiny mistakes, things I need to focus on, so I am glad I have this one last chance to fix it. This is how I know, by the way, that people do not have to obsess over making their books perfect in the early drafts. Because no matter how hard you work the thing—and believe me I have been rigorous, as have a variety of editors and readers who have touched the book—there’s always one little something (or two) that pops up at the end. And you still have time to fix it.

So far, amongst the little tweaks here and there, there has been one minor-ish timeline issue. I say -ish because in order to fix it I just had to change the year the scene happened from 1999 to 1998, but of course ten other things had to be checked as soon as I realized it needed to change. Like how old a character was, how long another one had been divorced, if there were any historical references that needed to shift. I saw it all cascade in my head and, for a moment, I was going to cry, but then I remembered I was a grown human professional middle-aged lady and not everything needed to be a fucking crisis.

Sometimes you just need to fix the problem and move on.

On the other hand, I also spent the good part of one morning debating with friends the use of the word wryly, as in a character saying something wryly. It was a really sharp thing the character was saying, potentially cruel, even, and it was in the second chapter of the book, and I didn’t want anyone to hate this character.

People get dinged for using adverbs all the time, at least in America, and, of course, if you don’t use them correctly it can throw a reader out of the scene. I don’t use a ton of adverbs in my fiction, although I don’t think twice about how much I use them in other kinds of work, like when I’m writing these letters, for example. But they still make it into my text on occasion, and I end up cleaning them up along the way—unless there’s no other option but to use them. So this is when I turn to my friends to find out their opinion.

Katy said she didn’t know what wryly sounded like and suggested I use a half-smile instead, but then I said, “What does a half-smile even look like?” Especially on this character we barely knew. Tricia said she liked adverbs, in a British way, and insisted I keep it. Laura said when you use wryly it makes it seem like you don’t trust the audience to get the joke, but also that sometimes nothing really works but a wryly. For me, I did trust the audience, I do, I trust everyone! But it was just so early in the book, and I didn’t want the audience to turn against her right away.

I could have kept going on this for a long time. It was both annoying to not have the exact right answer, but also so much fun because talking about writing and words and getting people’s opinions on all of it is my idea of a good time.

We all have our pet peeves, I bet you do, too.

Finally, I asked my editor, and she said I had used it correctly in the sentence, but you can never use it more than once in a book because it is the kind of word that stands out.

Anyway, fuck it, I kept the wryly.

I’m going back to my edits. Hope you have a nice week.

Jami

p.s. Donations this week went to Med Global.

p.p.s. Solidarity with Angela and Kathleen.

You are reading Craft Talk, the home of #1000wordsofsummer and also a weekly newsletter about writing from Jami Attenberg. I’m also on twitter and instagram.