Writing Rx and Overdose (4)

“. . . tips are like aspirin. One may do you good, but if you swallow the whole bottle you will be lucky to survive.”

—Harvey Pennick, Harvey Pennick’s Little Red Book


.................Rule 10 Try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip................
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Good medicine—if you can find the diseased areas. We are talking surgery here. (The most important part of the “blue pencil” is the eraser.)

Edit to remove everything that does not serve your purpose: the telling of a story that grabs and holds your reader’s attention. To do that you must write so as to remain invisible to the reader.













(“The Invisible Author” will be addressed in a future post. This is the “Philosopher’s Stone” of writing.)