A letter every Saturday about the work behind good work
One short essay, three things worth your time and a note from the editor, at seven in the morning, Eastern. Free since 2023.
I.What's in each letter
The same three parts, every week, readable in about four minutes.
One short essay
Five to eight hundred words from an editor or a writer in the next issue, often the first draft of something longer.
Three things worth your time
A book, a tool and a thing to read online, each with a sentence on why. Nobody pays to be included.
A note from the editor
What we're working on, what we got wrong, and the best letter a reader sent that week.
II.Letter No. 176: Why editors cut the paragraph you love most
This week's letter, as it arrived this morning.
Part 3 of On revision, by Iris Calder.
Every editor I've worked with has a version of the same sentence: this is the best paragraph in the piece, and it has to go. The first time I heard it, I argued for twenty minutes. The editor let me finish and then asked what the paragraph was doing for the reader. I didn't have an answer that wasn't about me.The paragraph was about my grandmother's sewing box. It's still in a file called "good, cut."
The paragraph you love most is usually the one you wrote first and hardest, before you knew what the piece was about. It's polished because you've reread it forty times. It's also, very often, about a slightly different piece, the one you set out to write.
So I've stopped fighting the cut and started keeping a file. Everything I'm told to remove goes in it, with the date. About one paragraph in ten finds a home in something later. The rest were there to get me started, and they did their job.
Three things worth your time
- A book: a printer's memoir about setting type by hand, mostly about patience.
- A tool: a timer that only counts up, so you see how long a pass really takes.
- A read: our own The second draft is where the writing starts, if you missed it in No. 14.
III.Questions about the letter
Is it really free?
Yes. Members pay for the magazine, and the letter is how most of them found it. It has never had an ad and never will.
Can I get it less often?
Yes. Choose the monthly digest from the foot of any letter and you'll get the best of four, on the first Saturday of each month.
Can I read old letters?
The last eight are free for everyone. Members can read all 176 in the archive.
The letter is where we try things first. If an idea survives a Saturday, it gets an issue.
Get next Saturday's letter
Letter No. 177 is about a piano tuner's notebook. It arrives November 14.