My brain is constantly jumping from one thing to the next, the tangents leading from one train of thought to the next lightning-quick. I pride myself for being able to make connections in others’ conversations long before they get to the point, and I often get frustrated if I feel like someone is taking too long to get to that point.

Yes, this is partially what leads me to interrupt people a lot (a terrible habit, I know), and it’s also super annoying for the person I’m talking to when I assume incorrectly and take the conversation in a direction they weren’t expecting.

I swear I’m working on this.

Also, while I was writing this, my husband asked me a question and ended it with “use your words.” We say this a lot in our house, partially as a joke because neither of us is expected to know what the other is thinking, but also because I sometimes forget to VOICE what I’m thinking, assuming he can just figure it out from contextual clues.

The problem with thinking this way is it bleeds into my writing. My editor is constantly telling me to stop hiding what the characters are thinking or feeling, to share it with the reader. But because I don’t like to read stories where the author hits the reader over the head with the point, repeating it over and over and over again, I shift too far the other way and sometimes forget to actually state the point.

Yes, I like to think my readers are smart enough to make the connections on their own, but some guidance would be helpful.

Over the past month I’ve been editing the novel I wrote before the Campfire Series and one of my editor’s comments was to search all instances of the word “this,” then clarify what the this refers to. A few examples:

• She always gets like this when her routine changes.
• This is how I imagine Gen feels when she’s sprinting down the soccer field.
• Whenever Lissa does this to her flavor-of-the-month from across the cafeteria it earn her a sympathetic smile.

I also searched the document for the word “that” and cut quite a few, and almost titled this blog post “This or That” for that reason. And I posted about this on Instagram.

Some of the this’s stayed put, but for the majority, I added a few words to explain. Odds are readers would understand what I was referring to in my HUNDREDS of instances of this, but the story is stronger now that I’ve spelled it out.

Now if only I could remember to do this—or that—when I’m talking.