Tuesday Technique: It’s not the ‘what’ it’s the ‘how’

The thing I’m learning as I progress as a writer is that it’s not the œwhat in writing, it’s the œhow, by which I mean: we writers tend to freak out over things like passive tense or adverbs, but I’ve read a lot of great books that drop PV/adverbs like sand.  I once went through one of the Harry Potter books and counted how many times Rowling used œwas in a sentence. In three pages, well let’s just say there was a goodly amount, but her writing wasn’t stagnant or boring. Quite to the contrary, and it has me going back to her books and researching how she padded in the œwas to make it vibrant and relevant, and it brings me back to my  initial point. When you’re writing it’s not the words you’re using as much as how you’re using the words.