Editing

I'm sat here wondering what to write. It's not that my well has already dried up and that I've got no more advice to give it's just that it's been a long week and I haven't had much time to give much thought to my blog, but here I am determined to get my Friday post written and uploaded. 

The photograph I've shared was taken the day before yesterday. It was around noon and I was out walking around in the neighbourhood where I live.

 

As I said in a previous post, I live in Toledo, Spain and as I said in another previous post, I don't plan on turning this blog into a full travel blog, but there are times when I am out walking and I say to myself that I must be crazy not to include at least a few travel posts here and there or about my life in Spain. Well, maybe some day, but that day is not today. 

Right, that's enough stalling...time to get on with today's post and today I'd like to talk about...drum roll...when we put too much unnecessary stuff into something. Oh, the irony. 

I have always been a big fan of "less is more". For those of you who may not know, or for those who may have forgotten, I used to play the drums. Allow me to toot my own horn here for a moment by saying that I used to play at a high level, but that's neither here nor there. 

Anyway, when I played I always liked to apply the "less is more" approach and what I mean by that is I liked to keep my head down and let the song breath. I'm not saying I just sat there and did the bare minimum, sounding like a boring drum machine - what I mean is I knew my role and knew that showing off and over-playing, would just make me, and my band, look ridiculous. And besides, at the time there was no shortage of showoffs. Without dropping names, there was a fellow drummer who used to fill everything in a song. So much so that he was nicknamed The Dentist.

I treat my writing like I treated my drumming, aware that there's more complex patterns and words and only applying them if needed. Where's this going? Is it for the bigger picture or is it simply me showing off? I ask myself that when I'm writing but not very often, because I tend to stick to basic structures.

I'm not saying it's bad to experiment or to write using complex vocabulary or expressions. By all means, if it suits the tone of your piece, go for it but if you're just applying recently learned words to show the world and its wife what you now know then stop right there. 

Experiment. 

Also experiment by writing less. Credit your readers. Don't hand it to them on a plate. Make them work. (their imagination.) Respect them while you respect your craft. 

I'm going to give you a writing task, should you choose to accept it. 

Write a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. It can be one A4 page in length. It can be shorter. It can be longer. You decide. 

Set your timer of how much you want to spend writing this. 

When you're done, read it, of course, but take a red pen and cross out all of the unnecessary words - this is something to get used to when you edit projects later on in your writing career. 

I'm sure your story now reads differently. I'm not saying it's going to read better, but it'll definitely be different, quite possibly with a smoother flow. 

This is just a writing task and it may or may not be beneficial to you so as I always say: take it or leave it. 

Another editing task is to rewrite this post of mine!

Answers on a postcard.