I mentioned yesterday that I’d begun re-reading Flight this week. I mostly enjoy reading it with this air of superiority as I think, “Ha! What a foolish twenty-two-year old I was! Look at that…I can’t even use ‘however’ properly.”
It was as I was thinking this that it occurred to me…I use ellipses…a lot.
I remember a creative writing professor mentioning to me that one of the banes to her writing was her use of italics because she just wanted to get her points across and I’d decided at the moment to never let that be a problem of mine. I’ve been so careful with my italics (in the novel; on here it’s a free-for-all) that I never even saw my problem with ellipses until just this week.
My first novel, full of missing or inappropriate words and comma abuse, is just riddled with ellipses…and so is Damen…
My ellipsis problem just popped in the midst of reading…and in horror I saw them all over the place in Damen. Every other sentence seems to include them, in both the dialogue and the prose. It’s just baffling to me that I’ve missed something that seemed like such an easy mistake to catch. In just one page, I removed at least six of them, shaking my head with each deletion…
Perhaps, I’ve just grown so accustomed to using them as a way of setting a tone that I never noticed it was getting out of hand…
Even now…I’m well into a secondary edit of Damen and I’m only now able to see how often I use an ellipsis when a comma would do or let a sentence trail for no reason at all…
I think this is really when I enjoy re-reading old things I’ve written. I get to haughtily look back on old works as I think of the progress I’ve made only to be humbled when I realize how far I have to go before I’m anything like the authors I admire.
I am kaitco 
[…] I also use ellipses when I write. A lot. I’ve remained conscious of it, but when I need to use them, I need them. LibreOffice’s Autocorrect includes switching three periods … to an ellipses, which is a very specific character that looks similar, but is functionally different in word processing. The problem is that unlike MS Office, LibreOffice does not take into account Autocorrect “wildcards.” […]
[…] I also use ellipses when I write. A lot. I’ve remained conscious of it, but when I need to use them, I need them. LibreOffice’s Autocorrect includes switching three periods … to an ellipses, which is a very specific character that looks similar, but is functionally different in word processing. The problem is that unlike MS Office, LibreOffice does not take into account Autocorrect “wildcards.” […]
Oh my gosh, I found you! I miss SVUfiction so much, and your story “Flight” remains, to this day, one of the best fan fiction stories I have ever read. I realize from reading over some of your blog that you have grown since then as a writer, but it will always hold a special place in my heart. I actually still have an email exchange between you and myself back from then, lol. Ah, the good old days. Now I want to reread “Flight” again, ha ha!
Oh wow! It’s so cool that you’ve found me through here. 🙂 It makes me so happy to read comments like this!! Just when I’m not sure if I should keep going with this aspiration, readers like you give me the desire to continue. Thank you so much!