After having a Critique Doctor review my WIP (btw, Diana liked my new piece), I found it suffers from a few common illnesses. My WIP is like an old bag lady that hasn’t had a physical in twenty years; some of her ailments are creepy. Here are a few things your doctor might check for:
rhinoredundancy virus [rahy-noh-ri-duhn-duh
n-see] –noun

any of a varied and widespread forms of a word responsible for many redundant uses, including the common repeat.
Most of the time, I catch and correct this mistake before I send it out for review. It’s something I do ALL THE TIME with a really obvious/descriptive word or verb. It’s quite comical now how often I do it. But I also have my favorites: feel, like, look.
tellyngitis [tel-uh
n-jahy-tis] –noun Pathology.

inflammation of the telling, often with accompanying sore dialogue tags, hoarseness or loss of show, and dry story.
Need I say more?
swinetense flu [swahyn-tens] –noun Pathology.
a highly contagious form of verbs caused by infection unable to filter the past, present and future virus first isolated from swine.
This is a new illness that has been popping up. Like most pieces, my WIP narrative is past tense and my dialogue is present tense. But lately it’s been all over the map. I can only guess it’s coming from all the books I’ve read lately in first person. My WIP is desperately trying to be in the present. If it becomes a problem, I might have to revise.
rheumatoid edititis [roo-muh-toid][ed-it-it is] –noun
acute or chronic inflammation of a WIP joints, often accompanied by pain and structural changes and having diverse causes, as correcting of writers tell, information deposition, or loss of MC voice.
I get this every time just before I send a chapter to my critique partner, which I don’t mind. Usually it’s been awhile since I wrote the chapter and it gets it first real edit.
writer’s blockkemia [blok-kee-mee-uh] –noun Pathology.
any of several cancers of the muse marrow that prevent the normal manufacture of word and thought cells and platelets, resulting in nothing, increased susceptibility to taking a break, and impaired word clotting.
See this is what happens when I have time away from the computer (aka vacation, kids out of school). If I’m not writing every day, I lose my momentum, my mojo and the MC’s voice slowly slips from my memory and I have trouble getting started again.
What does your WIP suffer from?