Draft No. 4

I have often heard writers say that if you have written your lead you have in a sense written half of your story. Finding a good lead can require that much time, anyway—through trial and error. You can start almost anywhere. Several possibilities will occur to you. Which one are you going to choose? It is easier to say what not to choose. A lead sh

an act performed not because it is necessary but because there is value in the act itself.…

A lead is good not because it dances, fires cannons, or whistles like a train but because it is absolute to what follows.

Once captured, words have to be dealt with. You have to trim them and straighten them to make them transliterate from the fuzziness of speech to the clarity of print.

The creative writer leaves white space between chapters or segments of chapters. The creative reader silently articulates the unwritten thought that is present in the white space. Let the reader have the experience. Leave judgment in the eye of the beholder. When you are deciding what to leave out, begin with the author. If you see yourself prancin

I stopped there as routinely as an animal at a salt lick.

Just to start a piece of writing you have to choose one word and only one from more than a million in the language. Now keep going. What is your next word? Your next sentence, paragraph, section, chapter?

“I’m just taking away what doesn’t belong there.”

When I come out and walk around, bumping into friends, they tend to ask me, “What are you working on?” Which is one reason I don’t often come out and walk around. I