Thesaurus.

I admit it, I use a Thesaurus when I write. Especially if you're writing a 70K+ word YA novel. With a lot of dialogue. Mine tend to be dialogue heavy, and you can only use "asked" and "said" and "replied" so many times. You have to be tricky. You have to eliminate those words altogether, or think up something ELSE. And when you're writing a big long novel, sometimes you find yourself repeating words. Sometimes. And sometimes it's not a good thing, because sometimes people catch the overused word--sometimes they're forgiving, and sometimes, well, I think you get my drift. Sometimes. ;-)

Hence, the need for a Thesaurus. I rather like mine. It's tattered and dog eared has diet Coke-can stains on it, and I probably need to buy a new one, but it's my friend. Especially when I'm EDITING. I have a nifty trick (I'm sure all writers do this but I'm giving myself kudos for thinking of it all on my own) where, when I go through a manuscript, I highlight a certain word throughout the manuscript with the "FIND" option. (In my case, I love "WAS," "LOOKED," and "THAT.") And I find all the instances, and make changes. With my handy Thesaurus.

I have decided to switch gears, and let my SOPHIE story rest for a while. Since I have my Fairy story on submission, I might as well get going on the sequel. I already have a good chunk of it written, and I've outlined most of it. So, I should work on it while the characters are fresh in my head. I've been thinking about them lately, and they've been acting out scenes for me, especially when I'm laying in bed at night trying to SLEEP... (you gotta love that!)

But I need to get my durn basement storage cleaned out, first. THEN I'll work on them. I can write in my head in the meantime. And my laptop is right next door if I need to dash over and get something down before I forget it.

Better get going!