This is a question that'd been bothering me for a while. Here's an example:
My heart racing, I wriggled to the edge of the bed and fumbled for Travis' hand. Just make sure to hold onto it, he'd said, whenever you get the chance. I searched for a few minutes until I finally found it—smooth and warm, sprawled on the cold surface of the floor. I gave it a light squeeze, but there was no response. Maybe he was asleep after all. Or just pretending to be? The easiest way to find out was to get up and ask him. Yes, that was what I had to do.
But, I didn't.
Funny, I had no problems with the idea of killing myself. But when it came to love, I was a complete coward.
Every time I see repetition like this, I remove it:
My heart racing, I wriggled to the edge of the bed and fumbled for Travis' hand. Just make sure to hold onto it, he'd said, whenever you get the chance. I searched for a few minutes until I finally found it—smooth and warm, sprawled on the cold surface of the floor. I gave it a light squeeze, but there was no response. Maybe he was asleep after all. Or just pretending to be? The easiest way to find out was to get up and ask him. Yes, that was what I had to do.
However, I didn't.
Funny, I had no problems with the idea of killing myself. Yet when it came to love, I was a complete coward.
Am I improving my writing with this? Or just being unnecessarily paranoid?
Answer
I think it's generally a good idea to be on the lookout for words you use too much, and swap in something else. You should look for repetitive sentence structure and repetitive phrasing as well.
My only suggestion for your example is for the second iteration, I would drop the word altogether, and just write "I didn't." It's more powerful that way.
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