Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Write tight, almost goodnight

Put your head on your pillow.  It makes it easier to read.


I overwrote my article by 556 words.  It took me less than twenty, heartless minutes to cut them all out.  My article was filled with extra words. Every time I used the word "said" I followed it with "that".  Omitting "that" took out about 20 words, and I went from there.  I felt a distance from my writing that I haven't experienced before - I had to get rid of almost half of it.

Steve's lesson on writing tight may be the most important lesson that I am taking away. (Even as I write this, I feel as if I could get this post down to just a few words.)  Two to be exact: write tight.

Steve also said that most people say stupid things.  Don't quote those stupid things.  Find the most important thing they said and just use that.  Good advice.

Tracy Anderson
Community High School
Ann Arbor, Mich.











Posted by at
Labels:

2 comments:

  1. DATJune 26, 2014 at 12:21 AM

    Tracy:

    Well done. Not just on the blog post but on that editing. Full disclosure: my article was over too. Not as much as you, but still...250 or so words...eek. (Forgive me, Steve, for I have sinned.)

    I think that editing is the hardest part of the writing process. Culling words you've come to know and love from a piece is a physically painful process. I'll do it, but I won't always like it. In the end, it's for the best, right?

    Great post, as always.

    David Tow
    Terra Linda High School
    San Rafael, Calif.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Laura MaritzaJune 26, 2014 at 8:38 PM

    I'm an over-thinking over-writer. I always have been. And my editors at STATS (then an AP company) would always tell me to tighten it up, but I struggled. Hard. I think I'm getting better at just spitting it out there as evidenced by my 836-word article, a far stretch from the 1200-word piece I sent to the editor for whom I freelance on Tuesday night. But it's not a skill you can learn or perfect overnight. I have a lot of work to do with that, and I plan on teaching it to my students. If you can get your point across accurately and tightly, why bother with the extra words?

    Laura M. Medina
    Montini Catholic High School
    Lombard, Illinois

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)