Adverbs can be really useful, and sometimes indispensable, but often they are just used to prop up a weak verb. Use a strong verb instead. For example, use "stabs" instead of "pokes swiftly", or "meanders" instead of "wanders slowly". Scan your writing for adverbs and ask yourself "Is there a stronger verb I can use here instead?". Sometimes the answer will be no, but if the answer is yes then use it and your readers will thank you.
Stephen King likened adverbs to dandelions. He says, "If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day... fifty the day after that... and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, and profligately covered with dandelions. By then you see them for the weeds they really are, but by then it’s — GASP!! — too late."
Mark Twain had a frozen indifference to adverbs. He said, "I am dead to adverbs; they cannot excite me. To misplace an adverb is a thing which I am able to do with frozen indifference; it can never give me a pang. . . . There are subtleties which I cannot master at all--they confuse me, they mean absolutely nothing to me--and this adverb plague is one of them."
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