The author of the article, John McPhee, begins with his history as a writer for one sentence long stories. Ironically, after he got hired to write for The New Yorker he began writing stories so long that they had to be published in two or even three consecutive publications. He also wrote about his experience with interviews, saying that he often writes down ten times as much as he will actually use. McPhee writes about Ernest Hemingway and his advice not to include everything that you may always want to include in your writing, because sometimes it is best to leave things out for the reader to imagine themselves. McPhee struggles with this himself when he explains a detailed story that he had to write about while also focusing on limiting how many words he is using. His story ends with a conversation he had with Eisenhower when he told McPhee that he made the choice to leave out a part of the painting because it’s simply too hard to paint.
I understand the point that while you’re writing it is important to pick the words that you use wisely, in order to make the most of them. I found this to be true even in “Omission”. While McPhee was explaining his personal story about his ride to New York City, I was getting overwhelmed because he wrote so much. I also think that limiting your writing is important especially in creative pieces where leaving out specifics allows the reader to create details themselves. Even Hemingway expressed his belief that writers should sometimes, “Back off. Let the reader do the creating.” Leaving out certain aspects of your writing can make it stronger simply because adding more substance doesn’t always equal a better piece. For example the story of Woody Allen when his editor told him that “the humor would be improved if Allen were to leave some of [his jokes] out,” because it takes away from each joke being funny individually. Despite the fact that McPhee feels as though you should include whatever you think is important in your writing, it’s sometimes better to eliminate points that don’t have as much substance behind them as others do, as this can take away from your stronger parts. This is illustrated well by Hemingway in his quote to George Plimpton when he says, “Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg,” leaving the stronger, big ideas as prominent pieces of the writing and limiting unnecessary words.
From my own experience as a writer, taking out unnecessary words can be hard especially when you’ve already sifted through your writing once before. In the end I do think that anyone’s writing will be stronger if they only keep the most important pieces, and this was made pretty clear by the example that we did in class. Sometimes adding extra words to your writing helps make it sound more cohesive and make more sense structurally, but it isn’t always necessary. Seeing that anyone can get their point across with minimal wording but also without changing the meaning inspires me to try and make my writing as concise as I can when I have the chance.
