Deleted Words

Where do words go when they are deleted? What happens to the erased letters once the eraser bits are brushed off the page?

Deleted words are the unborn children of Muses. Stillborn, aborted, they never see the light of the page. But words cannot die, and so they drift, aimless, without purpose, drifting through the psychic ether of humanity’s meta-consciousness.

The paragraphs retain the most cohesion. They stay together longest, their central concept creating enough literary gravity to keep the words in line and working together. Occasionally these ideas will find an escape in a different paragraph, leaving the actual words behind to stare longingly at other paragraphs who haven’t been subjected to the embarrassment of reworking and editing. The paragraphs who’ve had their central concept reworked often disband out of pure shame, splitting off in solo sentences whose work is much lesser than that of the paragraph as a whole.

Sentences however cannot maintain their individuality for very long, not with the pronouns seeking their own voice at every turn. The pull of each pronoun pulls the sentence apart, and they run off with other sentences, those more likely to find life on the page, eloping into the literary ether in the hopes of greener pastures.

Thus fragmented, sentences haven’t enough power to keep the verbs from skittering off, joining other sentences, running-on in a desperate attempt to find any escape from the nebulous limbo of the unwritten. Very often the verbs drag their sidekick adverbs along for the ride, and once the verb is gone, the sentence is castrated, purposeless. The fragmentation begins whole-heartedly now, disintegration of the cohesive whole the only fate left.

After the verbs abandon the sentence, the conjunctions have nothing to join together. They leave and are spewed back onto the page rapidly, the glue that binds concepts and allows comparison.

Next to go are the adjectives, hurling themselves whorelike at any passing noun, seeking solace in union after union, trying to find a way, any way, out, to be born onto the page. Descriptive writers are their only hope and salvation.

Once the adjectives are gone, the nouns drift along aimless, without any drive. They can and will be used again, given new life in other sentences.

Most pathetic are rejected character names, drifting along the literary ether, unwanted children of Muse and writer, neglected and forgotten. There in the darkest corners of the writer’s mind, they change and mutate into shapes of their own. Rejected character names become dark beings indeed, bitter and demented by their rejection, unwanted anywhere by anyone, a revenant creature, a word-zombie, clinging to their unlife in unholy desperation. This is why, if they do eventually once again find their way onto the page, the remains of their past incarnation keep trying to impose themselves on the narrative, unwieldy to work with, bitterly unwilling to let go of their past. Names have power, and that power can turn dark if unchecked. So beware, and name your characters carefully.