Brevity is Next to Godliness

According to the internet (and we all know that the internet never peddles alternative facts to people and calls them the truth), Johann Wolfgang Goethe wrote a lengthy letter to a friend. He finished it with a PS: "I am very sorry for sending you such a long letter but I did not find enough time to write a shorter one."

Writing succinctly does take more time than meandering all around the story as we beat around the bush, develop diarrhea of the keyboard and beat dead horses. Sometimes, writing even requires--shudder--that we delete some of our work.

Yep. That's right. Sometimes as writers we have to deconstruct. We find ourselves deleting words, lines or (horror!) pages... and it's frustrating.

Now, when I do NaNoWriMo, I try to delete as little as possible. All I'm focused on with NaNo is getting to the 50,000-word finish line.  I know my WIP's a pile of steaming poop, this first draft, and since I already know it's going to need loads of revision, I keep most of the word count intact.

There are times we have to cut a part we find particularly clever:  it doesn't mesh with the rest of the tone.  We have to slash a word here and a few words there, since we're over the word limit. We're gonna have to trash a whole page because the dialogue is deadly dull... and we put our heads in our hands and moan, since that means we're going to have to rewrite it... and it might be the third or fourth crack at that particular scene.

photo by pixabay

I love this construction sign because it makes me think of shoveling "stuff." There are times when I'm writing... and I feel like I have a shovel in my hand instead of a pen. 

What kind of revision tricks do you have up your sleeve?  Shoveling minds want to know...