I spent part of the weekend pruning our fruit trees.  Northern California weather makes it easy to grow fruit in abundance (except, of course, for the rain situation, and greywater takes care of most of that as well) and we’ve taken advantage of that by putting in a pair of figs, a couple of apricots, four apples, and two soon-to be removed pears (can’t win ’em all).  Ten trees in a single modest front yard isn’t as space-consuming as it sounds–we chose trees with similar root systems then planted them in pairs within 18″ of each other, so the roots natural competition helps to stunt their growth.  Still, there’s no way around thrice-annual pruning sessions, which have gradually become one of my favorite ways to spend an afternoon.

It was daunting at first.  It’s hard to get past the notion that dramatic cuts would not only hurt the tree, but eliminate a huge amount of the longed-for fruit.  Once I understood the logic of pruning cuts and something about the growth process of trees, though, it got fun–even therapeutic–right away.  Cuts aren’t really cuts, after all; cuts are growth.  Take a limb, and watch how the tree sends all its force to the nearest remaining bud, sprouting and re-filling the space left behind.  Open the center, and see how everything around it goes flush from air and light.  After a while you realize that there’s as much tree underground as above it, and the tree wants those two parts to balance, so after a good prune it comes back strong with healthy new growth, hopefully right where you wanted it.  Pruning is a conversation with the tree, a kind of call-and-response that plays out over years, and it’s enormously relaxing.

Writing is like that too, I think.  At first it’s hard, almost impossible, to cut a line you like, let alone a character or a scene or a chapter or what have you.  Is this is the good stuff?  Have I just gutted the piece?  Those questions are completely natural, and can be paralyzing.

But you know how often the answer to either one is actually Yes?  Never.  I like working off hard copies, switching back and forth between a word processor and editing and printout and writing it all out in longhand and finally typing it all back up.  That process uses up a lot of paper, and I rarely if ever recycle until I actually ship a piece.  After finishing a book I might have 6 drafts sitting by my computer, stacked almost as high as my seat.

And how often do those early drafts offer up material I dearly wish I’d kept?  How often to I reintegrate a line, a character, a scene?  I say again: NEVER.  It just doesn’t happen.  A tree will grow until it’s equal to the roots hidden underground; a piece of writing has a right size, and will grow to fill the spaces left behind by edits.  The stuff you cut may have been important at the time, it may have taken you in a crucial direction.  But when it’s time to cut it, it’s time to cut it.

You just have to trust that growth will follow.  It will.