Remove the Boring

I’m editing something right now.

My mantra is:

“Remove the boring.”

I read the piece again and again and again.

• As soon as my attention starts to drift: “Boring!”
• I start skipping over lines: “Boring!”
• I detect any repetition in the immediate vicinity: “Boring!”

I then come back and cut. Hack. Slash. Trim.

Nothing is deleted. Instead content is moved to a scratch document. It may be resurrected in the future. Who knows?

But the core text has to be interesting. It has to hold attention. It has to keep moving. It’s too long anyway.

I don’t recall where I head this advice: “remove the boring”, but it applies to everything.

In fact, I’ll stop reading a book if I feel the same thing, a drift in attention, an apathy to situations or toward the characters. The book will get a DNF.

Movies. TV. Everything. There’s too much cool stuff out there to push through the boring.

Sometimes it’s boring because I’m not ready for it.

This has happened to me a bunch. For some “harder” books you have to be in the mood. Hungry for what’s on offer.