A writer friend recently sent me an e‑mail. “What are you doing?”
I said, “Pushing the alphabet keys. You?”
She replied, “Working the delete key!”
I suspect that the most important aspect of writing is what’s not on the page. The white space. What you take out. Leave out. Cut. An editor once told me it’s much better to over- write, than under-write. Better to cut than to add, so you have only what is necessary. I once heard a lecture by Donald Hall, poet, picture book writer, a former US poet-laureate. If I remember his words correctly, he said, “The good writer tries to create the perfect O. But he leaves a gap, so that it’s like the letter C. If that gap is too large, your reader cannot fill it. If it’s too small, there is no reason for the reader to fill it. But if it is just right, your reader fills it with his/her own experience and the circle is complete.”
Want to study writing? Take three courses.
1. A journalism course will teach you what to put in.
2. A poetry course will teach you what to take out.
3. A voice class will teach you to hear if your words sing.