Next stop Vividville: Empty words depart here

Suddenly, I was very convicted.

While reading "Words that should never be written in a memoir or anywhere else" from Marilyn Mendoza's blog From Agoraphobia to Zen, I wondered how often I had used suddenly in my memoir.

I've attempted to strike very from my vocabulary, having learned it was an empty modifier from my days as a newspaper reporter, but Mendoza added a number of other empty words to her list, including suddenly.


Since I didn't want to be haunted by Stephen King, I searched my manuscript first for suddenly and found six instances:

1. Then suddenly, she waved the word “rape” to the school cop.
2. Suddenly, in this second interview with the detective, she had no problem discussing the sexual details of the night.
3. “If she laughs, she thinks I’m funny. If she thinks I’m funny, she thinks I’m good. If I’m good, she will want to be with me. If she wants to be with me, she’ll want to kiss me” and suddenly he was down a one-way alley with a blind intersection.
4. Then her brother died suddenly.
5. The music suddenly surged, and the bass drummers formed a line behind the pounding tenors who marched behind the snare drummers, who leaned back to project the sound of their cadence.
6. Suddenly, I had the same problem I had always had through 16 years of marriage: A depressed mate who wasn’t committed to me and couldn’t take action.

Six empty words in a manuscript of 81,271 isn't bad, but I can do better. I deleted suddenly from the first, second and fourth instances. No. 3 turned into "and before he could backtrack to check his logic, he was down a one-way alley with a blind intersection." In No. 5, "suddenly" became "swiftly." No. 6 was transformed into this: "As I coped with his sad clown demeanor, I realized I had the same problem I had always had through 16 years of marriage ... ."

In an effort to be thorough, I searched for very, thinking surely I had performed better on that count. I found, oh, about 20 instances -- so many I stopped counting. Oh, how very irritating. I deleted 80% of them while retaining the same meaning.

Net change: Two fewer words. Isn't it fascinating that eliminating empty words makes a story fuller.

It's not hard to take the polite put-off

"It's not you. It's me."

That's how the literary agent who rejected my manuscript categorized it, and I think she's brilliant. This is exactly why cowardly boyfriends use this line when dumping the boring girl/prude/clingy Glenn Close type: "It's not you, it's me" removes blame and all responsibility for explanation.

Honestly, I was sort of excited to open my first rejection letter today. In direct selling (my former profession), stellar sellers count the number of no's because it means they're getting closer to a yes. I can now cross Rejection Nos. 1 & 2 off the list. About an hour after the mail arrived, I got an email rejection, too, for which I'm grateful because I hate sending missives off into the internet and never hearing any response.

Here's who Rejecting Agent No. 1 broke the bad news:

Thank you so much for sending me the proposal for your manuscript THE DRUM LINE: A MEMOIR OF A SEX OFFENDER'S WIFE. The work is nicely done [you hear that? "nicely done"], but I don't have the passion that you need in an agent for their work to be done well. Fortunately, this is a subjective business and I expect that you'll find an agent who has no reservations. I wish you the best."

Rejecting Agent No. 2 said "this is not a project that is a good fit for our list."

Next!