In Joe Bunting's "The Write Practice" piece, The Ten Lessons Dr. Seuss Can Teach Writers, dated February 27, 2015, I resonated with these two lessons: 6. Be a Perfectionist: It took Dr. Seuss nine months to finish The Cat in the Hat, a book that only contains 236 unique words. He would often spend as much as a year finishing just one book. And these were not long books! Each sentence, each word is important. Don't rush. Keeping molding your writing until it's just right. (Share that on Twitter?) 7. Cut Your Book Down to Its Essence: Longer is not better. Cut your book down to its essence. #SeussLessons (Share that on Twitter?) As he worked on a book, Dr. Seuss would sometimes discard ninety-five percent of it before he was finished. It was not uncommon for him to throw out 95% of his material until he settled on a theme for his book. *** These points verify how important it is to edit and cut. My goal was to cut 9,000 words from my manuscript, and I'm happy to say I'm just about … [Read more...]