One thing that never ceases to annoy me about the process of writing is...

Unwriting.

By unwriting, I mean throwing away lines, paragraphs, entire scenes and chapters that serve little function aside from slowing down the narrative.

I once thought that, the better I got at writing, the less I would have to throw away.  Surely, the only reason I had to cut so much was because I wasn't clear in my thinking.  Once I became a great writer (I thought), I would sit down and write an entire piece from start to finish with no cutting, pasting, or rearranging required.

Sigh ... either I'm not any better at writing, or I was badly mistaken.

These days, I believe - rightly or wrongly - that that quality of a piece reflects how much had to be written and abandoned before the clear bones of the story began to show through.

The more you write, the better understanding you have of what you want to say and the many possible ways you can say it.  Only after exploring all possible avenues can you start to see a clear path through the jungle of your topic.  Only once you have found that path and embarked upon it will you be able to write with the purpose and clarity the work demands.  Then, you realize that the notebooks of jottings you've filled up until that point are not the secret stash of treasure you'd hoped.  Rather, they merely serve as a record of where you've wandered.

Back in college, I used to write ten pages before starting a six-page paper.  I needed to write down everything I could possibly say before deciding what it was that I wanted to say.  Was I making a lot of extra work for myself?  I don't think so.  Once I'd gotten the ten pages out of the way, those six-page papers just flowed.

Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way, argues that we should write three longhand pages of jottings the moment we wake up.  For her, this is a spiritual practice.  She considers the morning pages an essential "memory dump," when you get all those subconscious worries and observations and urges out of the way so that you can properly start your day.  Otherwise, all that stuff circulates in your brain just below the surface, clogging your thought processes and interfering with the present.  [Read my review of The Artist's Way and other great writing books here.]

In many ways, overwriting serves a similar purpose.  When you write ten times more than you need, you're getting everything out there.  You're seeing what you have to play with.  You're testing storylines or arguments for their staying power.

The difference between an experienced writer and a beginning writer is that the beginning writer wants to keep everything.  The beginning writer has spent ages honing and perfecting beloved scenes.  The thought that they may not have a place in the final work is unbearable.

The experienced writer feels the same pain but makes the cut anyway.  Affection for a line or scene isn't enough of a reason to keep it.  Just as none of us gets paid for being a nice person, so words don't earn the right to stay in a piece on appearance alone.  They must do work ... or facing the cutting bin.

If you have a hard time trimming down your work, then I'd suggest my #1 essential editing tool.  It's free, easy to use, and spares some of the pain of throwing away beloved material.  You can discover how to use it here.

So I've reconciled myself to the necessity of unwriting.  I don't have to like it, but I do have to admit that it speeds up the pace.  As much as I would like a reader to stay a while and linger over my beautiful imagery, I don't think many readers can be bothered.  It's a fast-paced world out there, and our words must keep the pace.