Reader,

In a recent post filled with writing quotes, Austin Kleon shared this gem from Elisa Gabbert:

Ouch. That hits a little too close to home.

Of course, it's never the book that's attempting to justify itself. That's what authors do. We feel compelled to defend our decision to write: partly to convince our reader that what we've written is worth their time and partly to convince ourselves.

I don't think we're born with this impulse. None of my children have ever felt the need to justify their creative output. (At least, not at first.) They're always remarkably self-assured when they interrupt my work and thrust ish doodles in my face.

Somewhere along the way, though, most of us pick up this self-justification habit. Perhaps it's because busy parents can only admire Captain Underpants coloring pages so many times. Perhaps it's because children inevitably learn that other people's attention is not something that you can take for granted. Perhaps it's because most students are taught how to write an essay before they're taught how to tell a story.

Whatever the reason, this habit leads me to a fascinating question: how does one write something that "just starts"?

The answer, I think, lies in our editing process.

As authors, it's probably good for us to consider why we're taking the time to write and why our readers should bother to read us. Writers who don't sit with these questions will likely produce something unreadable, if they even get across the finish line.

However, just because we need to answer these questions doesn't mean our readers share that need.

In The Writing Life, Annie Dillard notes just how difficult it is to discard these self-justifying beginnings. "That beginning served to get him where he was going, after all," she writes, describing a generic writer. But just because the writer needed that beginning does not mean that the reader does as well.

Thus, a failure to discard can lead to devastating consequences for your writing:

If that sounds demeaning, it's not. It's no small feat to cut words that once represented a monumental milestone in your writing process. It requires you to be daring. To take a risk. To demand something more from your reader—an act of faith that they will read what you've written and justify that decision all by themselves.

Yet, isn't that the kind of readers we want?

Keep your stick on the ice.

Frank.