This song got stuck in my head recently.
Watching a fake butt shake did it.

Really.

Having fun on a girl’s night out recently, we gals wandered through a lingerie store. A store that sold fake butts. I didn’t know these things were on shelves for the buying. I have been lucky not to ever have to wonder about where to get one.

Then I saw her.

A big, gorgeous woman packed into a neon green lace balloon standing in the hallway between the dressing room doors for all to see. She peered behind her, admiring her greatly endowed butt cleavage and asked her friend:

“Does it look real?”
“Hmmm, Lorraine, shake it a little. Let me see.”
I was mesmerized watching undulating buttocks and thighs jiggle in delight.
“Faster, Lorraine! Faster!”
The jiggle became a blur of rippling cellulite.
“Oooh, that’s real good.”
“But does it FEEL real?”
“Hmmmm…” getting a double squeeze in. “Yep, soft and bouncy.”
“You sure it doesn’t look fake?”
“Nahh, big and grabby.”

I wanted to cheer her on and belt out:
Has your girlfriend got the butt? (Hell yeah!)
Tell ‘em to shake it! (Shake it!) Shake it! (Shake it!)
Shake that healthy butt!

It was a good public butt shaking that made me realize, why DO we stuff our butts? Is it because we want attention, we want to stand out?

Nemo did this. “He touched the butt.” **whispering** He wanted to prove something.

He touched the butt. That's a pretty big butt.

As writers we want to prove we can write.
Is that what we try to do when we stuff our scenes with fake stuff? Add flowery prose. Dangle pretty adjectives and endless adverbs. Making ourselves puff up inside with our fancy sentences.

We’re shaking the fake butt.

Most people know a fake butt when they see it. It covers up the beauty of the natural butt. Every butt is different, like your book.

Don’t puff up your words to sound better.
Has another writer told you this? To not shake your words at us to say “Look at me! This is what I am trying to convey in this scene! This is what my character is feeling! This is what is happening, in case you didn’t know!” **sheepish** me.

Less IS more.
I’ve been told to say it in less. Use one description, not three. Use a simple word versus a fancy one. If its raining, just let it rain. Not. The whizzing drops flung themselves about in a hysterical, wet torrent like a raging monsoon. This is what first drafts are about. Then time to weed whack. I should know!

Do you have an image system in your book?
Is it consistent? Let’s not cram images in our books to dazzle us with fake visuals that don’t mean anything. They have to make sense, connect us to a character, an event, or a place. I admit to being a butt stuffer at times with this.
**sheepish** again. It’s when I go back in editing I hope I pull most of it out. All that stuffing covers up what you’re book is really about. What your premise is. Who your characters are and what they experience.

Ask yourself.
What are you shaking? Are you the real thing or fake? Be you.

A bigger butt isn’t going to make you more glamorous. It just covers up something great hidden underneath. I should know. My butt is big enough!