The Roman poet Horace said, "You must often make erasures if you
mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time." Two
thousand years later, those words still hold true.
If you're responsible for the content of a website or newsletter,
then erasures - editing - can make your words worthy of being
read a FIRST time. Erasures are one thing you can do (or rather
undo) to raise your content and your promotional materials above
the mediocre writing that dominates the net.
A composer once observed that sublime music is determined as much
by the rests as by the notes themselves. And so good copy can be
made better by the words you don't see on the page.
QUANTITY VS. QUALITY WORDS
I'm sure you've come across sites and publications that were so
full of padding, you wondered if the point would ever materialize
out of the fog of verbiage. A lot of content writers substitute
long copy for compelling copy, quantity for quality.
For example, one webmaster wrote a 3000-word home page stuffed
with incredibly repetitive keywords and phrases to please the
search engines. He may have concocted some yummy spider food
but I'm sure his would-be customers never bit off more than the
first 500 or so words. The missing ingredient? Erasure.
The article you're reading originally opened with a lovely
little anecdote that became an early victim of erasure because
it wasn't focused tightly enough on the subject at hand. It
wasn't easy to make that sacrifice, believe me.
SLASH AND BURN
Erasure is never easy. It requires you to be brutally honest
with yourself and your writing style. It requires slash and burn
techniques that may reduce your epic forest to a few lonely (but
pertinent) pines waving in the breeze.
If you don't have the heart to murder your darlings, you may
want to consider a professional "eraser". Blockbuster authors like
Stephen King, John Grisham and Tom Clancy wouldn't be where they
are today without editors who, you'll notice, are always praised
profusely in the forewords of their books.
Not everyone was cut out to be a best-selling writer. But we
can all take advantage of erasure to make our online copy easier
to read, more persuasive and ultimately worth reading... maybe
even a second time.
(If you'd like to learn more about editing your own content, read
the article Navel Gazing: How to Edit Yourself)
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(Link to: http://www.thewritecontent.com/freereport.html)
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