Writing is a constant rearrangement, like changing the way a room looks: moving the sofa here and the chair there and the bookcase to the other side of the room. And what should you keep and what should you throw away? Aye, that’s the question. It is a lot of work. You need a strong back and sometimes a hard heart. You can’t keep everything. Sometimes the very things you love most, like Uncle Harry’s velvet picture of tropical fish swimming down Fifth Avenue or Aunt Lulu’s diary descriptions of the twelve times she was abducted by aliens, may have to go.
There are many rooms in a novel, but there is no room for anything that doesn’t truly belong.
Kind of sucks sometimes.
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2 comments:
I think the biggest lesson I have learned so far is to first: write for me and hope for an audiene, rather than: writing for an audience and losing me.......
~d
I agree that you have to write for you first. Absolutely.
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