Wordplay (LynnK)

Just lately, I’ve been inundated with teaching, critiquing, and editing jobs. You know, the jobs that pay the bills. I knew that changing genres would be a problem, but I never realized how little time I’d have to work on new projects while keeping Lymond in Fancy Feast and me from pushing a grocery cart.

Yup. I have nightmares about becoming the Bag Lady of Coronado. “There she is, poor dear. Used to be a teacher and singer and writer. Now she’s digging for soda cans in trash bins.”

Editing is work that I like, though. And if I do say so myself, I’m exceedingly good at it. Oughta be, after so many years. Even when I’m being merciless, which is generally the case when dealing with an author who shows real promise, I invariably love and respect my clients. Writing a story for publication is not for the faint-hearted. Submitting it for a critique and paying for same shows true dedication.

In the early nineties, my own painful apprenticeship as a writer of fiction—during which I made every mistake known to man and invented several of my own—taught me the hard way how many things can go wrong between the visions in our heads and the words on the page. Nitpickers looking for flaws (unless they’ve been hired to do exactly that) should lighten up.

But writing troubles are by no means confined to those of us who labor in the trenches. Desperate to escape editing a story in which the characters were chuckling, blinking, and groaning every page or two (by page 30, I was considering ways to kill them all off!), I wandered over to the New York Times in search of relief.

Or a good laugh. The NYT is nothing if not pretentious. But there’s enough variety to keep me entertained, and sure enough, I came upon a skewing of book reviewers: “Seven Deadly Words of Book Reviewing.” You can check out the original piece here:
http://tinyurl.com/2699cp

Mind you, we authors are not fussy about praise. If it’s about us, and if it sounds good, we love it, even when it reads like a ‘phone-it-in’ review. A money quote like “Master Storyteller Lynn Kerstan soars to new heights with the splendid . . . .” Okay, I made that up. But from words used about my books. Honest!

However. Reading Bob Harris’s list of words overused by prestigious reviewers caused me to feel rather sorry for the poor creatures. Unless they are dissing my books, for which eternal damnation is only a little too harsh. It must be difficult, though, to keep coming up with innovative ways to say “This is mediocre,” or “This is superb,” or “This really sucks.”

Not that anyone should be excused from writing “eschewed” or using “muse” as a verb. I do have my standards. But Mr. Harris’s screed was outdone in the comments section, where scores of NYT readers noted their own pet peeves. And, I must add, defended “eschewed.” Go figure.

Readers do pay attention, though, God bless them. And here are a few of the words and phrases in reviews that make them want to claw their eyes out:

magisterial
subtle-but-powerful
taut
lofty
weaves a rich tapestry
darkly comic
page-turner
timeless
evocative
searing
cracking good yarn/read
XXX is at the top of his/her game...
spare and elegant prose
deceptively simple
a fresh new voice
plumbed the depths
deeply felt
a luminous parable (and its cousin, luminescent)
transcending genre

I confess that last one really gets my goat. What’s wrong with genre fiction? Not a damn thing. At its best, genre fiction tells great stories that people want to read. It can even be timeless, evocative, darkly comic, luminous, and deceptively simple!

Any words—in reviews, books, or any context—that you majorly loathe?

Let me start our list with "very unique," "a tremulous sigh," and “nether lips.”