: Re: How can I stop overusing "I" in my writing? I won't edit this question, so you can see how much I use it. The current count is 3 times. I've been told that the solution is to revise, revise,

The following information may just help you to stop overusing â€œIâ€ in your writing. It's a powerful technique because it draws on nothing less than your desire to stay alive. Got your attention? Then read on.

I'm currently engrossed in a book called Ageless Body, Timeless Mind by Deepak Chopra. In it he describes the implications of a study about Heart Disease by Larry Scherwitz, a University of California psychologist who:

taped the conversations of nearly six hundred men, a third of whom
were suffering from heart disease, the rest of whom were healthy.
Listening to the tapes, he counted how often each man used the words
I, me, and mine. Comparing his results with the frequency of heart
disease, Scherwitz found that men who used the first-person pronoun
most often had the highest risk of heart trouble. In addition, by
following his subjects for several years, he found that the more a man
habitually talked about himself, the greater the chance he would
actually have a coronary.

Counting the times a person said "I" was an ingenious way to quantify
self-absorption, and to me, there's something very fitting in the fact
that the less you open your heart to others, the more your heart
suffers. The antidote, Scherwitz concluded, was to be more giving: "
Listen with regard when others talk. Give your time and energy to
others; let others have their way; do things for reasons other than
furthering your own needs." In those words, he goes beyond the
quantifiable data to issues of love and compassion, which appeal very
much to our intuitive sense that an open, loving person should age
well.

You can draw your own conclusion from this, but if it doesn't give you a little more desire to stop overusing 'I' in your writing then I don't know what will.

Good luck with your writing.

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: Colloquial speech in pre-modern setting Following this question, I'm struggling with writing the speech of pre-modern (in my case - 5th century) noble-born children among themselves. Characters who

: "Too modern" words In a story set in a fantasy version of 5th century Persia, I've been told by a beta reader that a boy wouldn't call his father "dad", (would use "father" instead), wouldn't

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