As a writer…
We all know this feeling,
You have a great story.
Just awesome.
Wrote five pages, it’s working good.
And you forgot to hit Control S.
Or, you wrote the greatest poem
You’d ever written
Etc…
And suddenly the program crashes.
There it is, you can’t go into the backups
Because they crashed too.
Then, there’s crap you wrote
That you just didn’t like.
Just crap. Crap. Crap. Crap.
Then there’s cult stuff.
Crap. Crap. Crap.
Nobody wants to write a new book of Mormon.
Then, of course, there’s just crap.
Crap you wrote, just wasn’t feeling it
And it needs to go too.
Then, there’s crap you wrote
That you just don’t agree with.
It’s neither wise, nor certain why you wrote it.
Then there’s crap you wrote
Because you were having a little bit of illness that day.
Call it that. Let’s not go further.
Crap, crap, crap.
Then, there’s whole entire books
Worth of crap. They need deleted to.
Then there’s the crap that you don’t want to delete
Because it has some sentimental value.
Those you keep.
Then there’s the crap that other people don’t like
And you like it, but you get so frustrated
That nobody likes it, so it gets deleted too.
Then there’s that masterpiece
That in a moment of absolute absurd stupidity
You delete. And then years later
You wonder why you deleted it,
And you still can’t think of a good reason.
Then there’s the thousands of words
You deleted in editing,
Often making it worse
Rather than better
But everyone is convinced
Because their hand is now in your pot
That it is better.
Sooner or later,
That authentic vibe your writing has
Is gone, and someone else is there
Nagging at you.
And, so, it gets deleted.
Then, there are hundreds,
And hundreds, and hundreds
Of words that you delete
Because you just know they ain’t gonna sell.
Then there’s that feeling that you have your pearl
But you’d rather throw it back into the ocean
So the people at the markets don’t undersell you.
Those… you ought not to delete.
B. K. Neifert 