User:Wdl1961/zandbox2

The essence of editing is easy come easy go. Unless you can really say to yourself, "What the hell. There's plenty more where that came from, let's throw it away." you can't really edit. You have to be a big spender?

Editing must be cut-throat. You must wade in with teeth gritted. Cut away flesh and leave only bone. Learn to say things with a relationship instead of words. If you have to make introductions or transitions, you have things in the wrong order. If they were in the right order they wouldn't need introductions or transitions. Force yourself to leave out all subsidiaries and then, by brute force, you will have to rearrange the essentials into their proper order.

Every word omitted keeps another reader with you. Every word retained saps strength from the others. Think of throwing away not as negative-not as crumpling up sheets of paper in helplessness in rage-but as a positive, creative, generative act. Learn to play the role of the sculptor pulling off layers of stone with his chisel to reveal a figure beneath. Leaving things out makes the backbone or structure show better.

Editing means being tough enough to make sure someone will actually read it.

Peter Elbow, Writing Without Teachers, Oxford University Press, 1973; as quoted in American Journal of Physics 44(8), p740, August 1976

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