Chronicles of a Procrastinating Novelist Volume 35: "I Can't Think of the Right Word"

So the Writing Process Fairies proved so much fun for my sister and I’ve decided upon a new series of writing personification. First Draft Goblins. Unlike the fairies or Writing Day Types which are ubiquitous and may appear or occur at any time throughout the writing process, the goblins are as advertised, creatures of the drafting phase of writing. I have a feeling that they, reverse gremlin style, might metamorphose into nicer creatures in future drafting stages, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 

Meet "I Can't Think of the Right Word" Goblin.

Vocabulary, vocabulary, vocabulary is this goblin’s favorite skill to stunt. He’s camped in your inner thesaurus casually munching the pages with all the fresh, exact words, leaving you with a heap of stale terms you and 10,000 mediocrities have overused. With a belch and a shrug, he spits out a string of almost-the-right-words, all of which you add to the manuscript accompanied by an italicized note in red font that reads “fix in draft 2.” The only thing he’s good for is urging you to embrace the freedom of a first draft to be crappy and the infinite possibilities of revision. All one can hope is by draft two he’s too stuffed to keep stealing the good words. Thank you for reading, B