-Truman Capote-
Digressions often irritate me in novels, but, oh how much do I love to go off on multiple tangents when I am writing! You can see it happening even right here, where I feel that my own writing style, annoying as it will be to some, does not need restraining. Bad practice, of course, as the more I digress and the more I am likely to digress when I really should not. Cutting out the unnecessary though is not just about digressions; the road to writing hell is paved with adjectives and adverbs, those pretty little words scattered across the page like rose petals outside a church. If I remember correctly Stephen King (in On Writing) says that adjectives and adverbs are very much like dandelions: you spot one in your garden one day and it looks pretty; leave it there and in no time at all the garden will be littered with these nasty weeds. Despite my love for words, words, words, there is nothing I adore more than removing entire paragraphs, then adjectives, adverbs, repetitions, clichés and more. I just don't do it often enough. Today, try to be ruthless.
Go back to one page you've written and cut it down by one third.
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