Love this idea and I get why it works. My old group kept getting prompts like "write about a time you felt lost" and everyone turned in the same sad story with zero actual details. When you force people to describe the burnt casserole or the cracked driveway, the reader does the work and it hits harder. Banning a few crutch words is not a cheap trick, it just makes people slow down and show instead of tell. Two or three words sounds about right, more than that and it probably starts to feel like a gimmick.

I did the same thing with tomatoes one year, kept buying the dollar store pots because they were right there and I figured roots were roots. Switched to fabric bags mid season and the plants took off, mostly because the soil actually drained instead of sitting wet.

Waited four months to switch? I'm stuck on that part. You had that grinder sitting there for four months before you even tried it once? I would've had that thing out of the box the same night, grinding beans at midnight just to see what the fuss was about. Once you finally did it though, yeah, that first smell hits different and there's no going back after that. My whole family thought I was nuts when I started doing this but now they all ask me to grind for them when they visit.