Wipe

So tonight I’m work­ing on my “White Shirt” paint­ing. I spend a good hour on the most detailed part of the piece—the hangar hook and its shadow. I do a really nice job, with small brushes, get­ting each curve and the flash of metal just right. Detailed, but not too fussy. Then I step back.

I’ve made an error. The hook is too small. It looks almost right, but not quite.

I sit for a minute, then take a rag dipped in turps and wipe it off the paint­ing. You need to be will­ing to do that some­times, just as an author needs to be able to delete a won­drous chap­ter that just doesn’t work with the rest of the novel. If it’s not right, it has to go, no mat­ter how much you like it.