Avi

word craft

blog

Study writing? Take three courses …

Delete KeyA writer friend recent­ly sent me an e‑mail. “What are you doing?”

I said, “Push­ing the alpha­bet keys. You?”

She replied, “Work­ing the delete key!”

I sus­pect that the most impor­tant aspect of writ­ing is what’s not on the page. The white space. What you take out. Leave out. Cut. An edi­tor once told me it’s much bet­ter to over- write, than under-write. Bet­ter to cut than to add, so you have only what is nec­es­sary. I once heard a lec­ture by Don­ald Hall, poet, pic­ture book writer, a for­mer US poet-lau­re­ate. If I remem­ber his words cor­rect­ly, he said, “The good writer tries to cre­ate the per­fect O. But he leaves a gap, so that it’s like the let­ter C. If that gap is too large, your read­er can­not fill it. If it’s too small, there is no rea­son for the read­er to fill it. But if it is just right, your read­er fills it with his/her own expe­ri­ence and the cir­cle is complete.”

Want to study writ­ing? Take three courses.

1. A jour­nal­ism course will teach you what to put in.

2. A poet­ry course will teach you what to take out.

3. A voice class will teach you to hear if your words sing.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.