On Editing.

Are you willing to murder your darlings? Uproot some well-loved plants? Jettison comfy old furniture? If so, you may have a calling as an editor.

--DS.

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   To write well, one must write a lot.
   To edit well, one must lop and chop and prune and hack and attack...whilst keeping an eye on the good stuff that was masked by underbrush, pretty but crowded flowerbeds, overhanging branches, and the like.

Most of us are hoarders rather'n tossers, eh? So too with writers. Gosh, I hold onto a comma as if it were an oldest friend, and a favorite phrase like a life preserver.

Some internal dialogue as I respond to the editing done on THE ANIMALS OF CHRISTMAS:

---"Hey, I liked that comma there. It made the reader pause for a sec before plowing on, just a breather so that the next phrase is seen as related-but-not-merely-more-of-same."

---"Hey, I liked that adverb, too!" I know, I know, 'Show em, don't tell em' is the right way. You should have picked me up on this chump whom I had "...casting glances greedily at the coin." It's hackneyed. I shoulda said, "His gaze drifted back to the shining gold coin a third time. Then a fourth." The first way tells you what to think...the second shows you the scene and lets you figger out for yrself the guy is greedy.

---"I wish I'd caught that earlier, but now that it's in proof format I cannot make big changes. Otherwise, I'd hack that messy ppgh up into a two or three additional sentences that were shorter and clearer."

---"Sheesh, every time I read this passage, I get a lump in my throat. Sure hope my reader(s???) will, too!"