I’m prepping my book The Name and the Key for formal submission to my publisher on December 26. I just finished developmental-type edits based on beta reader feedback, and one of my readers told me that I fell into the trap of using “filler words.” And not just a little bit, either. I’ve been told my writing voice comes across as middle grade more than once (to my dismay and mortification), and the reason why this happens is because of my overuse of filler.

I did some research and came across this article, which helped me make a search list for my manuscript. I would type in the offending term and hit ctrl + F in Word, which would show me the complete amount of usage of that phrase. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I had to cut 818 fillers from the draft today.

Here are some of the worst offenders:

• “really” – 56 times
• “maybe” – 55 times
• “just” – 207 times
• “then” – 269 times

Those last two blew my mind. I had no idea I relied on those words so much!

Filler words are common, but why are they so bad? The biggest reason is that, on their own, they have no actual meaning. It inflates your manuscript, too, and weighs down your writing and flow through the addition of unnecessary words. It’s the equivalent of going “Um…uh….like” in human speech. It’s perfectly natural, but meaningless and unhelpful.

It’s true that my book read more smoothly after I deleted all of those filler words, but it was difficult because I couldn’t get rid of all of them. I felt some of them were needed, especially when they popped up in dialogue. Coming up with replacements was just as challenging, but somehow I figured it out!

And now, a sidetrack…

The next step in the revision process is something very cool and specific: adding summoning sigils to the manuscript. I commissioned a Turkish artist and witch (cool, right?) for an incredibly reasonable price to do a sigil for the demon Isabelle. I absolutely love it. I’m trying to see what the commercial fee would be to actually insert the art into the book, because the art turned out so well. Initially I was just going to look at the sigil and describe it in the novel, but now I want readers to see it. I hope the commercial fee will be reasonable….especially because I plan to commission a second sigil for summoning another demon, Aineiron.

If I have the license and permissions from the artist, the last step of getting the manuscript prepared will be inserting the sigils, and then I’ll be done!

14 days left to submit! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!