Time for 2015's first Insecure Writer's Support Group, a chance to share our hopes and fears, hosted by Alex Cavanaugh . Since starting as a writer eight years ago, I've grown. (I've gained about twenty pounds, but that's for another post.) The kind of growth I'll discuss today is writing skill development. While I still have so much to learn, one area I've improved is tighter writing. Be gone, verbal diarrhea! So I want to share this excellent post , 25 Ways to Tighten Your Writing by Betsy Mikel with YOU. A few of those tips that resonate with me: 1) Stop the adverb abuse. (I was a big offender). Dump the adverbs and choose more descriptive verbs. Instead of "I moved slowly", try "I trudged." 2) Knock out the highfalutin' vocabulary. When I first started writing, I wanted to impress everyone with my intelligence by using words like avocation, prescient, and anathema. Then I learned NOBODY CARES how smart I am. Read...