Anyone who has planted onion starts knows how time consuming and aggravating it can be to separate those tiny green threads and plant each one separately in even-ish rows. The work is back breaking but necessary to ensure the onions have enough space to grow to their full potential.

The third or fourth time that my indefatigable husband read my manuscript, he commented, “I’m not saying it’s bad, but you have a lot of adverbs.”  My first reaction was to deny it but when he started highlighting them, I began to consider why I use so many. I think I use adverbs because they seem more efficient. As an attorney, I have been trained to eliminate unnecessary words, and adverbs tell the story of “how” so much more quickly than showing it. Revisiting my manuscript to examine and eliminate many of the adverbs is painstaking, but maybe it’s necessary, just like separating the onions, so the action can speak for itself. In thinking about this, I found the following websites helpful:

https://jerryjenkins.com/powerful-verbs/

https://www.writingforward.com/writing-tips/avoid-adverbs

And for those interested in learning how to plant onions (they are very rewarding):

https://www.agardenforthehouse.com/2011/04/how-to-separate-plant-onion-seedlings/