How are fruit trees like editing?

Two years ago I planted a sapling peach tree in my back yard to replace a pear tree that had died. The first spring it produced eleven large, succulent peaches. I fell in love with the tree. The second year a wind storm blew all the blossoms off every tree in my yard and we had no fruit. After a hiatus, this year the trees have come roaring back, loaded down with fruit. Even with the constant wind blowing off tiny pieces, the trees are bending under the weight.

I learned the hard way a tree over burdened with fruit will break. I had a plumb tree split right down the middle, half the tree on the ground. I don’t want to see that happen to my new adolescent peach. So each day I go out and I pinch off pieces of fruit, here and there, checking each cluster and taking away the smaller piece. When the tree has less fruit to manage, the remaining fruit will grow larger and taste better, since the tree doesn’t have to divide its energy as much.

Today while I was thinning the fruit, I thought about how this task was a metaphor for editing my manuscripts. By going through the chapters, sentence by sentence, or branch by branch, and editing out the extraneous words, I am left with a better story.

It’s painful to pinch off beautiful peaches, but it has to be done for the health of the tree. It can also be painful to cut out words that we have labored to write. It also has to be done for the health of the manuscript.

If you’re struggling to decide which words to edit from your story, I recommend a website autocrit.com. This is a fantastic tool for spotting various issues most of us deal with-overused words, repeated words and phrases, sections of passive writing, too much introspection, etc, etc.