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The kindest cut of all

scissorsNoth­ing is more vital in the writ­ing process than cut­ting (not just edit­ing) your own work. Cut­ting can give a para­graph, page, chap­ter, ener­gy. Cut­ting can add dra­ma, and sus­pense. It can cre­ate wit and sharp insight. It is the art of say­ing more with less. It is skill­ful writing. 

Cut­ting well takes a great deal of time. It means going over your work word by word and sen­tence by sen­tence. There is a nat­ur­al, and under­stand­able ten­den­cy (par­tic­u­lar­ly in speech) to repeat, rephrase, return to the same words and ideas. To write, “ ‘I hate you!” he said angri­ly,’ ” is redun­dant, because the words “I hate you!” already con­vey anger. To add the “said angri­ly” is to slow things down. Or, “Eager to move quick­ly, she ran as fast as she could.” It suf­fices to write “She ran as fast as she could.” 

It is worth not­ing that work­ing on a com­put­er tends to make for longer man­u­scripts. It’s so easy to keep things. For those of us who once typed man­u­scripts, every cut made meant far, far less phys­i­cal work. And I think, bet­ter writing. 

A good practice—a hard one—is to take your man­u­script and arbi­trar­i­ly tell your­self you are going to cut five pages out of the next hun­dred. Or one page out of five. Then word by word, sen­tence, do it.

Your read­ers will thank you. And you will be impressed how much bet­ter a writer you are.

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