🚀 go-pugleaf

> Gerry Palo writes:
> As far as using Heinlein's rule, I wonder if anyone has ever tried it, with
> the added twist that when you finish a piece, if it is not worth
> submitting,
> then throw it away and start something new - don't submit it at all.
> I admit this would be very hard to do, but the discipline might help one to
> improve one's overall skills and productivity.  I would think also that the
> act of throwing a piece away might help in detaching one's ego from the
> work, something I find very difficult to do.

Funny you should mention this. I just finished writing a piece that didn't
work. Unfortunately -- since I'm employed to produce three of these pieces a
week and my deadline for this one is Monday at 9 a.m. -- that meant I had to
start all over again.

Instead of just throwing away the idea entirely, I started from a new angle
-- with a new lead paragraph and a different slant. I didn't try to revise
the old piece, just wrote as if I had never written the thing before at all.

That worked fairly well and then, at about the halfway point, I was
able to cannibalize the latter half of the old piece, with some minor
revisions and finish up.

 Also, I never throw anything away, unless it's time-sensitive. What
doesn't work one day might well work the next.

--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Wilson                       peter_wilson@mindlink.b.c.ca
North Vancouver, B.C.              or Compuserve 70674,2616
Canada