thesaurus surfing

I wrote today.

Well, I write just about every day. Doesn’t everybody? Show of hands.

I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire right now: blogs, articles, flash fiction, and of course, my YA novel WIP.

This time around, I’ve been trying to mostly disgorge my YA novel in a fell swoop. You know. Get that puppy down in a first draft and and then go from there, rather than the method of polishing as you go.

That’s a lot harder for me. I’m mostly doing it, and I think it’s paying off in a more complicated plot. But I’m still a panster. If you force me to outline everything beforehand, I am going to be very, very bored when I actually write the thing. And that, my little ones, will show up in the final product, won’t it?

But my last two chapters were SUCH a jumbled mess I gave in and rewrote today, and allowed myself the luxury of polishing.

What a relief!

Even though I write for guys, or maybe ESPECIALLY because I write for guys, I pick every frickin’ word I use carefully. I am a spare writer, kids. Look here.

And I got to wondering today if anyone else Thesaurus Surfs.

It goes like this:

I want to replace GUT WRENCHING.

So I look up “wrench”. Some of the words:

contort, bend, screw, twist

Lets look at “twist”:

corkscrew, warp, twirl, spin

Not quite what I’m looking for. Trying “spin”:

pivot, gyrate, whirlwind, torque.

EUREKA!

“…my guts torque.”

That’s a teen guy talking, if you ask me.