Today I heard my favourite adverb again. It ambushed me as I was listening to Dreamland, a strange and funny cocktail of suspense, horror and romance by Jenny Crusie and Bob Mayer.
I used to belong to a writers' group of adverb deniers. They said adverbs were bad. According to my fellow scribblers, I was inordinately fond of adverbs. Stubbornly, I refused to subscribe to the popular notion that adverbs must go.
Use strong verbs, they told me. Then you won't need adverbs. But I felt that was like telling a chef that using good ingredients would preclude the need for condiments.
I was preternaturally fond of the adverb I've used earlier in this sentence. But when the word cropped up in my writing, all six people in the group told me it did not exist.
The next day I was listening to Diana Gabaldon's latest, and there was my lovely adverb again. I told the others, but they were unmoved. Reprehensibly, I decided to take action.
If I had to give up adverbs, I would go down fighting. Next meeting, I brought in a copy of the opening paragraph of a Dick Francis story called "Haig's Death" (from Field of Thirteen, London, Michael Joseph, 1998). Four adverbs in forty-seven words is about twelve percent.
Today when I heard my lovely adverb again, I felt preternaturally smug. No, I definitely didn't imagine that word, and I am certainly not alone in liking it.
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