An editor's claim: in most drafts the first paragraph is the writer clearing her throat. Delete it and read what is left. Nine times in ten the piece now starts where it should.The test: does the second paragraph make sense to somebody who never saw the first? If yes, the first was for you, not for them.Forty seconds, an editor at a desk, generic, no name kept. Saved on a Monday evening after Edith's shopping. It is Zinsser at the length of a sneeze, and I had finished his book two days earlier, so I was primed, but the clip gave me something the book had not: a move small enough to do on a Wednesday night. Tried on three old issues before trusting it. One from the spring opened with a weather report: cut, better. One from the autumn opened by explaining what the issue would be about: cut, much better. 📝 Issue 42 - Your backlog is a stock, not a list, the one that travelled, was left alone, because I had rewritten that opening in June until it was the point.Two out of three was good enough to steal the title: 📝 Issue 51 - Cut the first paragraph went out on 20 November. The draft of that issue had a first paragraph about why I was writing about first paragraphs. Noor's cut, one of her three comments, was that paragraph. She did not mention the irony and neither will I. One more line in the practice log for ♦️ Writing clearly.
