That!

How sneaky is 'THAT'!
I was feeling quite smug at having completed the first draft and first edit of my next book, 'The Perfect Duchess', Bk,2, in the 'Lords of the Matrix Club' series - and thinking it might not need much more editing before I sent it off to a couple of beta readers for their thoughts!
Sitting in my In Box was  'Heart To Heart', the May-June newsletter from Romance Writers of NZ, and the craft article by Daphne Clair de Jong entitled 'I Couldn't Put It Down' caught my attention. It was all about things to look for in the last edit. Very timely, I thought.
Among other excellent tips was a list of words we tend to pepper through our writing and which are quite unnecessary. (I was going to write 'totally superfluous' here and changed my mind! Guess which of those words is superfluous! And yes, I do realise that 'quite unnecessary' is not much better!)
Anyhoo! I typed 'that' into the 'Find' box of my 223 page ms and there were over 1500! It took me all afternoon but I deleted over 400 of them and the ms was then 221 pages!
THAT is when I realised THAT 'THAT' is sneaky and THAT it likes to be heard and THAT it likes to be seen, and THAT is THAT.
Thanks Daphne Clair de Jong.
(Who writes romance as Daphne Clair and Laurey Bright).