I stumbled across this post by Mandy Hubbard about what authors have learned from their editors. My favorite is from Jennifer Brown, author of Hate List:

“On my last manuscript it was “just.” I spent an entire two-hour flight just deleting “justs.” Also, I learned from my copyeditor that Dumpster needs to be capitalized, and I’m pretty sure my copyeditor would jump up and down with glee if I learned the difference between “each other” and “one another.””

“Just” is my word too!! I’m so glad to hear someone else suffers from the “justs.” (At least two other authors on the list admit to being in the “just” club as well.) When I had my thesis defense for Queen of the Air, my thesis reader told me to go through and count how many justs were in the novel. Turns out there was at least one every page. I didn’t even notice it! Now I try to told back.

Make sure to click through for the whole list of editorial suggestions. It’s fun to see that even fantastic authors have their writerly ticks. What are yours?