“Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” – Elmore Leonard
If you’re writing for other people to read, the activity you should be doing more than anything else is editing.
Editing is crafting.
When I edit, I consider how my thoughts will come across as someone else reads them. Things go away. They move around. Words get replaced. Specifics turn into generalizations, or vice versa. Examples turn into principles or patterns, or vice versa. “I” turns into “you”, or vice versa. Every word should have a purpose. Any that doesn’t should be tossed.
When I edit, I ask questions. What if the reader already knows this? Will repeating it be boring? What if the reader doesn’t know this? Will nixing it be confusing? Who is my likely reader, anyway? What’s my goal here? Is this a tangent? But is it relevant? Is this funny? Should it be? Where should I start? Where should I stop?
When I don’t edit, I regret it. I feel good when a thousand-word post just comes right out, but whenever I publish one of those without at least sleeping on it, I come back and find a thing or two I should probably have tweaked.
