I Just Cut 1,800 Words

Exhausted, lonely, guilty is a small price to pay for a tighter article.

I just cut 1,800 words from a 6,400-word article, more than 25 percent of the language I’ve loved and labored over for weeks, cut, deleted, gone.

Tonight I am exhausted, lonely, and guilty, but in the morning the words that remain and I will be refreshed, strong, whole. And so we shall remain until Tuesday, when I somehow will scratch off another 600 cherished words, leaving my fingertips raw and my heart aching but the article complete, precise, substantial.