My bad habits

The editor really helped me see some bad habits in my writing, which is great.  Now I have to slog through Switch and undo them all.

Bad Habit #1:  Starting on a preposition conjunction.  So I like to start sentences with conjunctions.  But it's not like I do it for every sentence.  And I think sometimes it gives the sentence a certain flair. Of course you have to be careful not to make it a habit.  Unfortunately, I have.
(Update: yeah, I know those are conjunctions and not prepositions.  What can I say?  It was late and I was tired and confused and forgot the words to Conjunction Junction.)

Bad Habit #2:  Towards not using really anymore.  I always say Towards, instead of Toward.  To remove that, I'm just taking the word out when I run across it.  I use really all the time, because I really like the word really, as it as a really good sense to phrases.  Apparently I also am terrible at using anymore properly, and usually write any more.

Bad Habit #3:  Lay vs lie vs laid vs lied.  Ah, forget it.  I'm just going to have everyone and everything stand up.

Bad Habit #4:  The great POV switch issue.  I do really good at not confusing POV in the main body of the story, but I stick in all these authorial asides that are in the wrong POV (usually second person).  That needs fixed, because it's really distracting.  Typically the fix is to cut it out.

Bad Habit #5:  Too many parenthetical phrases (like this one) and way too many colons: they're distracting.  But I love colons!  Almost as much as I like starting sentences on prepositions.  I'm not so sloppy that any characters talk in parenthesis - that would be too much - but I do stick them in exposition an awful lot. 

There's a multitude of other, smaller, less frequent things, but I've seen a giant surplus of those issues in the first seven chapters of the story.  And I never noticed them before!

See, kids, this is why we edit.