Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Too Many Words

'Axe, cut, compress, condense, decrease, delete, drop, eliminate, eradicate, excise, hone, lop, pare, prune, reduce, remove, revise, rewrite, sharpen, slash, streamline, tighten, trim, whittle. … Two dozen words to remind us that we almost always write too many words.'
-- Theodore A. Rees Cheney, author of Getting the Words Right: How to Revise, Edit, and Rewrite

3 Comments:

At 9:53 PM, Blogger John Ettorre said...

Thanks, Steve. This made me smile. And by the way (I meant to write about this but haven't yet), did you see that movie they made of Bukowski's life? It's called "Factotum." I happened to catch it in the fall at the Cedar-Lee, and found it interesting, if depressing. The guy certainly was messed up, but it all made for a not uninteresting movie. Unfortunately, I don't think Matt Dillon's modest acting abilities were quite up to the complexity of the material.

 
At 10:46 AM, Blogger John Ettorre said...

I figured you might be on top of that, Steve. Drop me a line after you've seen it. I'll be curious about your take on it. Not to bias you, but I found it almost comically dark. But then, the guy certainly did live quite a heavy life.

 
At 10:28 AM, Blogger John Ettorre said...

I dig that last stanza. How very true that is...

 

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