One more thing about over-writing.

I think especially for people who aren’t confident writers, the thought of deleting text, of getting rid of those hard-won words you wrote down, is a nightmare.

You may have heard of the phrase: killing your darlings.

This is the concept, maybe more commonly discussed in more literary or creative writing, that writers become attached to their words, the words become precious, and then the writer cannot bear the thought of unceremoniously deleting them, even if it would make the text better.

We’re all like this. For me: I usually have a place—at the end of a document, in a separate one—where I cut-and-paste these darlings to, rather than just letting them die. Just in case.

But I’ve learned two things by doing this.

One, that I very rarely go back to find what I’ve put there. If it’s important, or belongs back in the main text, I can remember it, and in the process of recalling it and rewriting it, there’s usually a step of revision built in, and it becomes even better.

Two, that even words that I delete, are not wasted. They are words I had to use in order to get to the words I choose to use. They are pieces of clay I cut away for a piece of pottery, the silence between musical notes, the sketches and sketches and sketches done before a final painting. To use last week’s metaphor, they are the potential short-cuts I try—some work and some don’t but I’m gonna see some really cool stuff on those dead-ends.

Without those darlings, I never would have gotten to the best final product I could make.