Carolyn Erickson

Back in September of last year, I won Linda Formichelli’s Tom Swifty contest. (The accolades, the prestige!)  Actually, it was a heckuva lot of fun and I got a copy of The Renegade Writer’s Query Letters That Rocked, which is a very helpful book to have if you want yours to rock too. (Some of them were eye-openers that - gasp - broke all the rules.)

Anyway, since writers just wanna have fun, especially leading into the Memorial Day weekend, I thought I would post my winning Swiftie, as well as the ones that didn’t make the cut. (What’s a Tom Swifty, you ask? Click on the link above - Linda explains it admirably, and you can see a slew of funny ones in her post and in the comments section. Two of my favorites are “I can’t write with this thing; get me some No. 2 pencils!” Tom said pointedly. and, “You need to think of a plot,” she outlined.)

So, my winning entry (ta-da-da-DAH):

“I hate writing articles with bullet points,” he said listlessly.

And here are the duds:

“I might need corrective lenses,” she speculated.

“That phrase is not redundant!” she repeated.

“The milk’s gone bad,” he uttered.

“The fire has died!” he bellowed.

“She’s a little pigeon-toed,” he pointed out.

“Don’t let the left brain know what the right brain is doing,” she said thoughtfully.

“One of my legs is longer than the other,” she said unevenly.

“If this were a foot-race, I’d be a shoe-in,” he said flatly.

 Sure, some of them bite, but they’re fun to write. Can you come up with your own? Really you should try it! Yours will probably be much better than mine. Put them in the comments! (”There is no prize though,” she said meagerly.)

If you need some inspiration, I made a list of verbs and adverbs (and saved them, which says something about me, but I’ll postulate later on what that is…). And I will gladly share them with you. (Because honestly, what else will I do with them?)

Hey, postulate - that’s a good one. Here are some more:

uselessly
moronically
feverishly
interjected
grinned
frankly
moodily
waveringly
freakishly
melodramatically
soundly
eagerly
wishfully
hopelessly
meagerly
wistfully
seriously
plainly
trivially
tragically
fretfully
cautiously
quacked
croaked
gulped
frowned
posited
recommended
querulously
queried
rakishly
randomly
squeaked
projected
considered
guessed
estimated
longingly
abstractly
frantically
dejectedly
aimlessly
whined
calculated
quoted
sang
rambled
fitfully
mysteriously
stated
frostily
frothily
bubbled
spewed
spouted
sputtered
stuttered
muttered
whispered
persisted
glowed
growled
breathed
hollered
burped
intoned

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