Avi

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The Kindest Cut

kindest cutWork­ing on a book and it is not going well.

I have learned, painful­ly, there is only one thing to do: Fol­low my instincts as a read­er and not my intel­lect, and acknowl­edge that such and such a sec­tion just does not work, that it is hold­ing the book hostage. If you find your­self skim­ming over your own work—that is to say—being bored, that will hap­pen to your read­er as well.

What to do.

My sug­ges­tion: Print out the offend­ing sec­tion, pick up the pen and cut, and cut again. That works. Why?

If you were strug­gling with your text, and did not have a clear sense of where you were going, you inevitably filled that text with stuff­ing, ver­biage, and unnec­es­sary words—pure excess. Your job is to locate it and cut it out.

Easy? No. BUT—better to be a good read­er of your work than a poor writer.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Writ­ers don’t write writ­ing. They write reading.

It’s some­thing I need to remind myself over and over again.

3 thoughts on “The Kindest Cut”

  1. Like this idea! How do you approach chang­ing the POV in your non-fic­tion pb sto­ry? That’s what I’m con­sid­er­ing doing, and not sure if there are any guide­lines to doing this?

    Reply
    • Best way I know is to set my ms aside and get the new pov in my head and write a fresh doc­u­ment. But if it is nf, no mak­ing any­thing up, or it becomes his­tor­i­cal fiction.

      Reply

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