How to Display Some Creative Maturity
Anne relates a recent editing session, sharing the pain of dropping 400 words from a novel draft:
Darn. I’m in the middle of the umpteenth pass on chapter three and it’s pretty awful. Or at least it was until I just took out some 400 words! The 400 words weren’t all that bad, but they were terribly redundant. I don’t think I double copied anything; no, I’m sure I didn’t. The passage was just too different than the rest to be one of those errors. It looks like I simply didn’t pay enough attention to what I had already written when I created this one.
What struck me was her willingness to slice off a large chunk of what’s practically her own creativity. But she knows what’s more important than freely indulging her own creative sense. The reason why the 400 words had to go was, of course, a need to keep the message of the book pithy yet comprehensive.
We all know to use only what we need for the project. Writers who can express more with less are good, while designers who can convey with fewer elements are good. The point is that Anne is displaying some creative maturity, because she knows its all about fulfilling the requirements of a project. Even for personal projects, what works is sometimes incompatible with what we want to do. Always go for the latter, even if you have to “kill your babies”, as Debra says.
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1 opinion for How to Display Some Creative Maturity
Anne Wayman
Sep 7, 2008 at 9:22 am
Thanks for the kind words and the link, Rico.
A
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