Rhonda's Forbidden Word

"After throwing the kitten out the window, Ozzie began to marvel at its ability to fly."

That has got to be the worst sentence ever created with the English language. Seriously. I should get some kind of award for it or something.

Let's think about what, exactly, is wrong with it. Well, okay, plenty. It sucks. Badly. But I'm most concerned about my apparent fixation on every form of the word "begin" there is. I discovered this about two days ago while going over some of my edited work. On almost every page, the CP had stomped out a "began" or a "begun."

I have an infestation.

Let's try this: "After throwing the kitten out the window, Ozzie marveled at its ability to fly."

Still disturbing, but much cleaner. It isn't a bad word to use from time to time, but overuse can really water down your prose. Don't even get me started about "that," "and," "but" and a host of other tiny pests that can get in under the radar.

You would think that a Zero Tolerance policy is the obvious solution, but I wouldn't go quite that far. "And" and "but" make perfectly wonderful conjunctions, as long as they aren't overused. They're also great for controlling rhythm and flow. The trick is to know when the importance of rhythm outweighs the importance of word conservation, instead of simply falling back on a particular sentence structure out of habit.

If you use an "extra" word, you'd better have a darn good reason. That's where the art comes in.