The Economy of Words

I just attended a two hour session with author and poet Mary Karr, put on by Lighthouse Writers Workshop. I enjoyed it immensely. I have three of Karr’s books (The Liar’s Club, Cherry, and Lit)—all memoirs. I was very interested to hear about the author’s writing process. She talked about the number of rewrites she did with Lit. After going through about 15 revisions, Karr sent it to her editor and had to cut even more material. Published, Lit is 386 pages long. During the editing/revision process, Karr said about 2000 pages were eliminated from the book. I think this is an example of the hard work that is involved in polishing one’s writing. An author can’t go with a first draft or a second or a third; instead, it is a long, arduous process to mold the book into a final product. Karr says that, in the end, her writing is a finely hewed product. Poetry has helped her to learn the economy of words.