As a writer, I find myself constantly editing my strips to make them less wordy. I have given a conscious effort to reduce the amount of words that I use to convey a point. I have found that people prefer to obtain their information in short, bite-sized bursts instead of complex, long-winded rhetoric or fully detailed dialog burdened with minutia. In fact, I bet only a few of you actually read that last sentence. The point is that I realized that my writing needed to tighten up and I have tried to do so, but it is a hard thing for me to do.
At first, I really struggled to edit my strips. Part of me felt I failed because I didn’t get it perfect the first time. I hate making mistakes and I felt that anything that needed editing was a mistake on my part. I got over that pretty quickly once I realized that I was running out of room to draw in my panels. Even at that point, I still had a hard time editing and I had no idea why. But then it dawned on me; I was a product of academia.
In college, I had to write for volume. Every paper had a specific page or word requirement that had to be met. I even had professors who graded tests based on the length of essays (or so it seemed). It did not take me long to figure out how to stretch my writing out as far as possible. Instead of saying Stalin was bad, I would write Joseph Stalin was a very bad leader of the Soviet Union and committed terribly egregious acts of violence that left scars visible to this day. I became quite adept at writing the same basic idea twenty five different ways. I learned to value every word that I wrote, and that is why I have a hard time editing to this day.
My time in college had engrained in me the idea that length is as important as content in one’s writings. My time in the real world has convinced me otherwise. As a result I’m trying to teach myself to be more direct in my writing. I’ve also come around to the idea that editing is a good thing. In fact, my whole outlook on writing has changed. I feel that a good writer is able to clearly explain ideas with as few words as possible. That has become my new goal with each strip I write.
