Does This Hold True for Editing, as Well?

When we remove 'the boring bits' from a book, following Elmore Leonard's advice to 'leave out the parts readers skip,' where does all that dross go? Possibly into terrible books. But that would be a waste of a learning experience for all of us.

Where it should go, dear reader, is into the backs of our minds, reminding us in the future exactly what boring looks like, so we will know it when we see it, spot before we type it, and eliminate it before our minds wrap around it as an option.

So if you, by some unhappy chance, have picked up a book consisting only of excisable bits, do give yourself permission to chuck it in a northeasterly direction as soon as you have given up all hope.

Back to the grind! Words and deeds to be entwined! Off I go, to my glowing screen: until the next time, my pretty things!