The kindest cut of all

The goal of every writer is to write well, well enough to attract and hold read­ers. But where­as the goal is gen­er­al­ly the same, the method, the process of writ­ing will vary (to at least some degree) with every writer. Writer A ris­es ear­ly, and writes best in the morn­ing. Writer B is a night-owl and does best in the dimmest hours. Some write by hand, pen, pen­cil, com­put­er. Oth­ers actu­al dic­tate their sto­ries, as did Hen­ry James. My late friend, Robert Cormi­er (I Am the Cheese) wrote his books by hand, after which his wife typed the man­u­scripts. I knew some­one who wrote his books para­graph by para­graph on index cards! So it goes. Thus when I make sug­ges­tions it is tru­ly only a descrip­tion of what I do. It may be help­ful. It may not. It’s one of those things you might want to try at home—or not.

All that said, I believe it was Stephen King who said some­thing to the effect that the only way to learn about a writer is to hear his or her words. Per­haps that says some­thing about the cur­rent pop­u­lar­i­ty of audio books. But I would go a lit­tle fur­ther, and sug­gest that the only way to learn about your own writ­ing is to hear it. This is to say, read it aloud. Not just read aloud, but read to some­one. Hav­ing an audi­ence allows you to sense the qual­i­ty of reception.

(I recall that Madeleine L’En­gle [A Wrin­kle in Time] had her hus­band [an actor] read her new work aloud to her. Not sure I could go that far. I find it hard to lis­ten to those books of mine that have been record­ed. And they are usu­al­ly record­ed very well.)

Just today I was read­ing a new book to a class of fifth grade stu­dents. They were absorbed in the sto­ry and enjoy­ing it. As I read how­ev­er, I sensed that the work was over-writ­ten, in need of cut­ting. Sharp­en­ing. When I read this way (and I do it for every book) I always have a pen in hand. When I sense the text is lag­ging, I make an X. Back home, I rewrite those sec­tions and more.

In this day and age of com­put­er usage it is extreme­ly easy to over­write. Too easy, I think. In the day of the man­u­al type­writer (I wouldn’t go back) the effort of writ­ing and rewrit­ing made one want to self-edit, cut, sim­pli­fy. Edit­ing was, in essence, labor-sav­ing. These days—even when work­ing with a computer—I will cre­ate a six­ty thou­sand word man­u­script and then set myself the arbi­trary task of cut­ting two thou­sand, five hun­dred words. Capri­cious per­haps but an exer­cise in con­cise­ness and tight writ­ing which does me good. My writ­ing is bet­ter for it.

Those cuts may be the kind­est cuts of all. For the reader.