The 10% Solution

Self Editing for the Modern Writer

By Ken Rand

 

There are many ‘how to write’ books out there.  Some, such as William Zinsser’s ‘On Writing Well’ are the gold standard for ‘how to’.  Others offer…well…less objective and useful assistance. 

 

One well worth the very inexpensive $5.99 cover price is Ken Rand’s The 10% Solution. Available only by mail order from the publisher Fairwood Press, it’s worth the wait for it to arrive.

 

What Ken does so well is to walk you through the process of cutting and tightening a manuscript, using the search feature of your word processor.  After a brief introduction and ‘history’ of the process of writing the book, Ken launches into the nuts and bolts.  He offers a list of ‘empty words’ that clutter up and pad prose, rendering the text flabby and soft.  By typing these words into the ‘find’ function of your word processor you can track them throughout your manuscript and replace them or restructure your sentences so that you eliminate these flabby, empty words. 

 

That search process will also reveal your prose ‘bad habits’! Did you find 23 instances of the empty verb ‘was’ on page one? Uh oh.  Maybe you need to use more vivid verbs!  Ken also offers suggestions for how to alter that flabby sentence with ‘was’ or ‘that’ in it so that it sings. 

 

Can you learn all this from Zinsser?  Yep, you sure can.  But Ken allows you to start seeing your prose weak points quickly and easily.  I suspect Zinsser might have suggested something like this if he had had access to a word processor and a search function!  

 

If you want a copy, go to Fairwood Press. Click on ‘Catalog’ and then on ‘nonfiction’ and you’ll find it right there!     www.fairwoodpress.com

 

In my opinion, it is well worth the meager price.  Give his method a try and you’ll learn a lot about your own writing habits. 

 

 

   --Mary Rosenblum, Web Editor