Years ago, when I was first attempting to be a serious writer, I read a lot about writing, from other writers, from editors, from anyone I could find. I knew I wanted to improve and didn’t know how and so I tried to take as much in as I could.

One of the pieces of advice I received at the time, from several sources, was the idea that every word should count. To paraphrase one writer, you should hold a gun to the head of every word and see if you need it or not.

At the time, this seemed an impossible task. How could you, the me of the time would think, examine every single word and assess its worth? I could only see a story on a sentence level, not on a word level and I just chalked it up to the way my brain worked.

Yet know, years later, with more experience under my belt and, hopefully, a better perspective, I now understand what that means. I now know the effectiveness, even the joy, of going through a story and cutting a word here, a word there, of breaking a sentence down to its essentials and making it say what you really want it to say. I only realized that, however, today. And it feels like an accomplishment. It feels like I made the next waypoint and that I have traveled a bit further down the road.

Better still, I didn’t have to work at it, at least not at that specifically. I worked at writing better, certainly, but that ability and that awareness arose out of the process organically. As I said, I think it’s a matter of perspective.

I guess I’m having one of those writer moments and I think it’s pretty fucking cool.