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I knew it was the perfect ending line when I wrote it. It was funny. It was memorable. It was emotional. Then I let someone read the piece I was writing.

“I didn’t get the last line.” What?! I launched into a long explanation of what the line meant. “OK…but are any of your readers going to know that?”

Sometimes readers are so annoying! So I went back to my piece and began reworking it to include an explanation that would make the last line understandable. I had to shoehorn in information about a little known fact I had stumbled across during research. Of course that was made more complicated by the fact that I was working with word count limitations. Other things had to come out to make room for the explanation and suddenly the piece was going in a whole different direction. Was that the direction I wanted to go? Argh!

I was faced with the choice of cutting the perfect line or revamping the entire piece. I cut the line. I loved that line.

How often have you stubbornly held on to word, a line, a subplot because it is just so good? Turn over a new leaf this year and abandon all that “perfect” writing by recognizing that it’s only perfect if it works within the specific piece you’re writing. If you can’t stand the thought of losing some gems start a file of “keepers” – everything from last line to words to ideas. Writer’s block is a great time to dust off things in this file and write something using them. Maybe you’ll just use them to remind yourself that you can write.

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