“Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain” – Elie Wiesel
I have have read Wiesel’s book Night, which is thin, and yet packs a far more powerful punch than many fat works. For non-fiction, his quote is clearly true: what you leave out is as significant as what’s left in. For fiction, however, when everything has to be put in from the author’s imagination, a whole world must be created. There is no rock to take away from. There is only dirt, which must be formed into being, like men formed from clay.
Shawn L. Bird 