It was really interesting to me to read about omission. Before I had begun reading, I was unsure of what “omission” even was. What does it mean to omit something? I looked up the definition to better prepare myself for the reading. Omission is “someone or something that has been left out or excluded.” In writing, I had never even thought about omission before. I have trouble when it comes to exceeding the writing limit; if the paper due is supposed to be 5 pages, I’ll write 6. I don’t do this on purpose, I just have a bad sense of omission. I never know when to leave something out or what should be cut from my works of writing.

I do believe that omission is just as important as all the other strategies and factors that go into writing. In the article, the author discusses the power that the writer has. “Writing is selection. Just to start a piece of writing you have to choose one word and only one from more than a million in the language. Now keep going. What is your next word? Your next sentence, paragraph, section, chapter? Your next ball of fact. You select what goes in and you decide what stays out.” (Mcphee.) This shows that the writer chooses what he or she puts into the piece of writing and what he or she chooses to omit.

It is important that you are comfortable with the material that you are writing about. “Write on subjects in which you have enough interest on your own to see you through all the stops, starts, hesitations, and other impediments along the way.” (Mcphee.) The author explains that being more comfortable with your materials will help you get through any “writer’s block” you may have. This, I believe, will also benefit you in your decisions of what you omit from your writing.

The author focuses a bit on factual writing and makes a statement which I believe to be very true. “Factual writing is also a kind of treasure hunt, and when the nuggets come along you know what they are.” (Mcphee.) When writing an argument, debate, research paper, or persuasive essay which includes real facts, sometimes there’s certain facts that really stick out and those are the types of facts and statements that you don’t want to omit. Those are the types of material that will strengthen your work.

The writer begins to compare writing and omission to Michaelangelo and his works of art, which I found to be an interesting analogy. Michaelangelo explains that there is a statue that is waiting to be found in every block of stone. It is the sculptor that chooses what to pick away and omit and what to keep there in the work of art. He uses all his tools, such as a mallet and a pitching tool, to omit what does not belong. (Mchpee.) This was a spectacular analogy, in my opinion. I view all works of writing as art. The process of writing is the process of making a work of art, it takes patience, vision, skill, and knowledge of what to put in and what to keep out or omit.