Counting? Like the Count on Sesame Street?

YES.

Here’s the deal, because you know there is one, and you know it’s sticking in my craw and making me cranky.

Increasingly often, I’m running into writer’s groups full of authors who get busy counting the number of times they use a word in a manuscript. And then… they obsess over that number, like they are afraid they are over the magic threshold and if they can’t get under it, their book is going to suck.

“I have used THAT sixty-five times in 60,000 words! Is that too many?”

I alternately want to slap and/or shake these people and wrap my arm around them and say, “Honey. Relax.”

Because you know what? There is no magic number.

Like so much else in the craft of writing, the counting of specific words doesn’t matter (and is potentially a waste of time, even if you run that cute little feature in Word that tells you how many times you’ve used a word and really, how much time does it take and what’s the big whoop, Sooz? The big whoop is the mental space you’re diverting from the actual job at hand). What matters is nuance. How it sounds. How it works on the page. What it brings to the story, how it operates, how it enriches.

See how those are all positive things? Not a negative among them.

That’s because the instant the negative shows up, you’ve overused it. That can be the second time you’ve used it, or it can be the thirty-fifth, or it can be the seventy-second. Or it can be the two hundred and ninth.

It’s about how you use a word. Period. There’s no magic to that; it’s craft. It’s hard work. It’s reading your prose out loud to yourself, or using a text-to-voice program or whatever you need to do in order to let your ear hear what your eye may not see. It’s listening. It’s taking the time to write, rewrite, resculpt, reimagine how to say something if need be.

Stop counting. Start listening.

As always, feel free to drop me a line if you’re struggling. I’m booked up for a few months right now, so you’ll have to wait. But who cares? I’m worth the wait.

A good writer’s group can be really hard to find. I say that having been a member of many that weren’t great. There was the guy who took my manuscript one week when it was up for critique and, instead of being helpful, wrote lovelorn poetry to a girl he’d known in college who had shunned him. (I can’t say that I blamed her, but not because the poetry was bad.) Or the man who told me that I was marketing a different work to the wrong audience and should target it toward teenagers.

It was a Young Adult project, and it actually eventually landed me an agent.

So, yeah. I get it. Finding the right critique group or partners can be really hard.

But making the effor to build your own personal writer’s group is so, so worth it. When you have a group of motivated, like-minded people — and by like-minded, I don’t mean you’re all writing in the same genre or category. I mean you’re all interested in learnning as much as you can about craft and how to improve your own writing — you learn more. The group lifts each other and themselves, all at the same time. Maybe one has a great eye for detail and can help the others learn which details in a scene are important or vital, and which aren’t. Maybe one understands pace and tension.

Most groups, though, don’t operate on such a specific basis. They are simply groups of writers who seek the same goal: to improve. And maybe they don’t have the experience or language or desire to talk in technical terms. That’s okay, too, so long as they can say, “I don’t know what you’re referring to here,” or “I don’t believe this character would do this. Back in chapter 3, she did the opposite.”

Anything that makes you think, stretch, grow as a writer is a bonus. Yes, even the guy who talked about the audience for my then-project was helpful because at times, he could identify when the characters would act too adult. (The rest of the time, we’d hand him our cards for free cookies at the local grocery and let him make multiple visits to get multiple cookies because, hey, it was one cookie per visit, and one visit ended when you set foot outside the store.)

These days, it’s both easier and harder to find good groups — easier because there are so many. Start with your local library. Most have writer’s groups, and many have multiple groups, often with differnet areas of interest, but sometimes, they only have different instructors. The library can also help you find amazing writer’s groups. Some, like Romance Writers of America, are national, with local chapters. Some, like Sisters in Crime, are for both writers and readers, which is a good reminder that readers can be part of your own writer’s group. You don’t have to confine yourself only to writers.

And then there are smaller, regional groups. I continue to love and recommend Pennwriters to my clients; their resources are deep and their conferences top-notch. Best of all, when the conference is in Pittsburgh (which happens in odd-numbered years), you might get to hang out in the hospitality room with your favorite editor. Pennwriters isn’t just a local group anymore, by the way. We have members from across the nation.

Groups abound on Facebook. They gather among hashtags on other social media. They form in bookstores.

Get out. Get networking. A writer’s group can be as small as two people who exchange manuscripts and read and critique. They can be as large as the members can manage, with some offering vocal support, others offering critiques, and still others helping market when you have a publication.

There’s no one-size-fits-all, so get out there. Network. Build your writer’s group, and use that group to learn your craft. Let them help you take your manuscript as far as you can; learn as much as you can. Lean on your network to help you learn and develop as a writer.

No, a writer’s group can’t take the place of a really good freelance editor like me. (Even the groups I’m part of don’t get the full benefit of my abilities, much as they try to pry it out of me.) But what a writer’s group WILL do is help you maximize the investment you make into your editor.

After all, why are you paying me to teach you how to punctuate grammar when you can learn that for free? Wouldn’t you rather have your money and my time be spent on the bigger, deeper issues that will lift your manuscript from good to something more?