It is neither an easy nor a pleasing task—especially to the novice. The early children of our brain seem of such priceless worth, that we regard them with a certain sense of awe. "Did I write that beautiful passage about the moon silvering the tree-tops? Then it must belong just where I put it. Cut it out? Certainly not! I consider it the most exquisite paragraph in the whole story."
This is the way we look at our work when we have not many published items to our name. Later, experience and the training that comes from practice, teach us to arm ourselves as a matter of course with a blue pencil, ignore personal sentiment, and look at our MSS. with a coldly critical eye. Then we may discover that a sentence or paragraph, though of undoubted merit and beauty—(we need not deny it that much!)—does not quite fit in where we originally placed it. Possibly it is superfluous, in view of what follows later; or redundant, in view of what went before; or it may have lost life and colour with the passage of time; or it may seem hackneyed, or weak, (though we do not use such insulting words to our own writings till we are fairly advanced). But whatever the reason, if on examining a sentence, it does not appear to serve any vital purpose, take it out. If you think there is worth in it, save it for a possible use at a later date in some other MS., though, personally, I do not believe in any sort of réchauffé of old matter, simply because as time goes on we change in our style of writing as we do in our tastes and preferences in neckties. And what you write this year, will not necessarily dovetail in with what you write in a few years' time. Still, if you feel it would be wasting flashes of genius to destroy it, and it would be any comfort to you to hoard it—do so; the main thing is to delete it from the MS. you are revising, if there be any doubt about its value.
A beginner's MS. usually needs to be cut down to about half its original length. Hard luck, for the beginner, I know, considering the way he will have laboured lovingly over every sentence.
MSS. need to be "Pulled Together"
Nevertheless, it pulls the work together if the blue pencil be applied generously. Some articles and stories appear to sprawl all over the place (sprawl is not a pretty word, but it is expressive). The writer does not seem able to follow up any idea to a logical conclusion, without interpolating so much irrelevant matter that the main theme is nearly smothered by the extraneous items, and the reader gets only a confused impression of what it is all about.
Such work needs "pulling together," i.e. the essential portions that should follow each other in natural sequence need to be brought closer together; and this can only be done by clearing away the non-essentials that separate them.
The way Phil May made his Sketches
The late Phil May once showed me how he drew his inimitable sketches, that always looked so simple, oh so simple! to the uninitiated. First he made a sketch full of detail, with everything included, much as other people make sketches. When this was finished to his satisfaction, he started to take out every line that was not actually necessary to the understanding of the picture. Finally he had left nothing but a few strokes—yet, such was his genius for seeing what to delete and what to leave, the picture had gained rather than lost in character, force, and comprehensiveness.
The secret of the matter is this. By removing everything that is not of vital importance to the whole, (whether in painting or in writing), there is less confusion of vision, less to distract the mind, or switch it off to side issues.
This does not mean that everything is better for being given in bare outline. Undoubtedly certain additions and decorations and descriptions can be made to emphasise the author's meaning, to impress a scene more vividly on the mind. We do not want all our pictures to be modelled on the lines of Phil May, clever as his work was. There is room for endless variety. The author should remember, however, that it is better to err on the side of drastic deletion, rather than leave in matter that is no actual gain to the picture, and only serves to distract and confuse and overload the reader's mind.