Go back to my #blogvent calendar

I’ve been writing for a long time. I don’t know that I’ve been writing well, but I have been writing. One of the things that’s most important when writing is learning to edit. To “kill your darlings”. The more I think about that, the more I realize that’s part of the equation of living a happy life.

We have to learn to edit. Find what you enjoy and you start editing out the parts that don’t make you happy. And the more I think about it, this applies to everything that we’re able to improve. We improve our writing by editing. We improve our art by editing even though it can be hard to stop adding details that feel very important. We improve our music by editing. A lot of what we consider beautiful in music happens in the silence, where there is no sound, and it’s been edited out.

Editing is hard because it means we have to remove something. We have to review what exists and consciously decide to remove a part of it. And I think that’s part of what makes it such a freeing exercise. We get to choose what stays and what goes. We know that what we’re left with is what we really want. But I think that the act of editing makes us think deeply about our choices, weigh our options, and be realistic about what our available paths are. And when we do remove the elements of our lives that feel worthy of being edited out, we have an opportunity to fill that space with something we love.

Go back to my #blogvent calendar