Pretty weeds

As the words tumble out, multiple streams saying the same thing splash onto the page.

Repetition.

There are three reasons repetition remains:

• Love
• Fear
• Paralysis

We’re naturally attached to the things we write.

We can dress up a single idea in many costumes. But because they look unique, and we planted them, we protect them. Our precious seedlings. It's unnatural to plough through the hours of writing we've laid down, ripping up the seeds we’ve sown.

But, we have to. We need to be ruthless. Because a lot of what we sow, are weeds that steal what the beautiful ideas need to grow.

They crowd, they suffocate, and they steal the light. Most dangerously, they steal your reader’s limited attention.

We're scared readers won't get it.

So, we concoct recipe after recipe of the same ingredients. But, we don't have to force feed our reader. Sometimes people know what something tastes like by the smell alone.

Writers sometimes have to be brave enough to let readers fill in the gaps.

We don’t know the best way to say something, so we say them all.

But, if we're saying the same thing in ten different ways, we’re not writing efficiently. We need to be brave and decide.

We should be pruning phrases, sentences, paragraphs, whole chapters, and entire ideas that we spent a long time planting.