Just Eliminate Some Of Your Deathless Prose
September 5, 2008 by Anne Wayman
Filed under Jobs
(www.thegoldenpencil.com)
Darn. I’m in the middle of the umpteenth pass on chapter three and it’s pretty awful. Or at least it was until I just took out some 400 words! The 400 words weren’t all that bad, but they were terribly redundant. I don’t think I double copied anything; no, I’m sure I didn’t. The passage was just too different than the rest to be one of those errors. It looks like I simply didn’t pay enough attention to what I had already written when I created this one.
The truth is I had spend considerable time writing 400 words that simply didn’t belong where I put them.
I hate taking out 400 decent words, but out they’ve gone. I hung onto them for a bit in an unsaved file, but they aren’t stand-alone, so they’re gone!
Someone once told me they could tell I was a “mature” writer – and they weren’t talking about my age! – because I didn’t hesitate to dump my own deathless prose.
So I say to you, don’t be afraid to dump something you’ve written.
Write well and often,
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Great advice, Anne. I love when a writer can recognize his or her own bad writing. Some people will cling to every. single. character. and it’s infuriating! That’s what editing is for, to cut out the stuff that’s not helping so you can leave room for what works. :)
I think someone once said when it comes to writing, you should be ready to “kill your babies.”
When I cut out stuff, if I think it might have promise somewhere else in the story, I usually paste it into a file of “outtakes.” It lets me cut the verbiage from what I’m working on, but still store the words elsewhere, in case I need them. (Which, frankly, I rarely do. :))
Yeah, Debbi… I used to store stuff like that until I noticed I never used it. If it’s hurting too badly in the moment, I’ll paste it to a file, then dump that file later.
Hardest lesson to put into practice, but it’s the most important one. I run into this one when I’m working on a per-word rate. It KILLS me to yank out redundant words! But I figure if the piece is stronger as a result, I’ll score more work. Sure enough, it works!
lol, maybe that’s why I don’t charge by the word. I understand Dickens was also paid by the word and that’s why his books are soooooooooo looooooong
no idea if that’s true or not, but I like the story.
Debbi, I love that quote. I don’t know who said it, but I think it’s “kill your darlings.” :)
Lori, me too. ;)
Anne, I heard that about Dickens, also. They were written as serials, so the longer he wrote the longer the series lasted. Brilliant system! LOL
I knew a guy once who wrote serial porn… not sure what that has to do with anything.
Kristen,
Yes! That’s the one I was thinking of–I knew it didn’t sound quite right the way I had it.