Make Your Writing Cohesive
You think you’ve finished? Go back to the beginning.
You write it all, discovering it at the end of the line of words. The line of words is a fiber optic, flexible as a wire; it illumines the path just before its fragile tip. You probe with it, delicate as a worm. — Annie Dillard
I have just finished a piece, a short story called (for now) “The Parrot.” The story has come to a close in a place very different than the spirit in which it began. For much of this draft, I thought I was writing one thing, but I’ve learned here at the end that I was writing something different.
I have to be aware of this as I enter the editing.
“It is the beginning of a work,” writes Annie Dillard, “that the writer throws away.”
She’s right.
Those opening paragraphs can often be hard to cut or to rewrite because they remind us of the burst of inspiration that set the whole thing in motion. We grow nostalgic for them. We think that they set the scene because they set our scene. They put us in the mood or the moment.
