Someone Once Said . . .

I've decided to try to dig up some good quotes about writing and process and share them every once in a while. My first quote comes from a true writing genius:

I try to leave out the parts that people skip. ~Elmore Leonard

I chose Elmore's quote because I definitely have learned a few things about writing from things he's said in interviews, books he's written. And this one quote really speaks to me.

Why?

Because my name is Erica Orloff, and I am a skipper. (Heretofore an ANONYMOUS skipper, but now I've admitted it. And that I am powerless to change the way I read.)

Can't help it. A book has to be extraordinary for me to read every word. Otherwise, I skip.

But more than that, as a writer, this is my style. When Spanish Disco first came out (my very first novel), I got a lot of very nice emails from readers who liked the edginess of it. I got a great blurb in Cosmopolitan magazine. I was thrilled to have my first novel out there. It was also at the relative beginnings of chick lit in the U.S.--not that I think you can pin it on a single date or year or book. Nonetheless, when you went to the bookstore, there weren't row upon row of pink covers (not that mine was pink) in trade size flooding the new release table. Chick lit was hot. And a few readers DEFINITELY let me know that I had a lot of nerve thinking my book was chick lit.

Well, the problem was, I never had. I wrote a comedy. I never considered genre--I just happened to try to sell an edgy comedy when that was what publishers were buying--and marketing. But Spanish Disco, as one online reviewer wrote, didn't have the Sex and the City vibe. There were no name brands mentioned. No parties. No wildly funny friends. No Cosmopolitans. None of that. Part of it was Cassie Hayes, my heroine, was a tequila-swilling b*tch and a loner. Part of it was I don't particularly care about any of those things--name brands and Cosmos. That would be the part I skipped.

So I left all that "skip" stuff out. In fact, as I went on to write 5 more novels for Red Dress Ink, with one exception, none of them had that vibe. Because that would be the part I skipped. I don't drown people in details. I can't read historicals for precisely that reason.

And therein is part of it, too. People who like historicals would NEVER skip the details. That's part of what they love. Me, I like dialogue. The more realistic the better. And I skip to that part. It's all subjective.

So . . . do you skip? What parts? And do you find you hack away at the "skip" parts in your own work?