- I’m editing Escape, one of my NaNoWriMo draft novels. The book begins with a tight-knit genealogy group called Ghost Chasers (GCs) meeting for Friday lunch, so Fridays are important in my manuscript. Current writing rules insist that I minimize repetitious words in a single paragraph (notice the interchange of “novel” and “manuscript”) or close proximity where the reader will register the duplication. To omit one of those Fridays I searched for a substitute for Friday. What? Friday is Friday. How else can I say it?
- Weighing a decision of whether GCs will meet today on the thirteenth, I researched superstition and fears associated with that day to see if true-to-life Texans would dare leave home. Frigga is the prefix in friggatriskaidekaphobia, fear of Friday the 13th. Hooray! Frigga means Friday. Who knew?
- Since there are three F-13s in 2012—January (today), April and July—I’ll be kind to my superstitious Texans by backpedaling the novel to 2011 where a reluctant GC disappears on the single Friday the 13th that year.
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