Sometimes when we sit down to write, we realize we’ve researched a topic too much. We’ve uncovered lots of fascinating tidbits. Our heads are jammed with precious facts, like jewelry boxes brimful of lapis lazuli or chests bursting with indigo garb. However we can, we try to fit every detail into our first draft. We just can’t live without seeing all those treasured finds in print. But let’s be honest. We’ve accumulated too much. Some of it has to go.
Time for a blue pencil–wielding (or blue Track Changes–using) blue penciller to blue-pencil our manuscript! We need an editor who specializes not only in grammar, spelling, and punctuation, but also in shortening text or deleting extras that simply don’t belong.
Before posting Blue, the Color, I did the job myself. I’d read tons of material—books, articles, and museum brochures—without even consulting the Internet. Blue is a popular subject. The week after I offered my take, the New York Times published an article and a sidebar on it.
Can you guess why I didn’t include the following views on blue?
- Although blue and green are found in nature, they are absent from Paleolithic and Neolithic art.
- Fourteen centuries ago, the sculptors of the Buddha of Bamiyan were the first to use lapis lazuli as paint.
- Probably unaware of native Indigofera species, Eliza Lucas (later Pinckney) had the first successful Indian indigo harvest in the United States in 1744.
- In 1917, Mahatma Gandhi staged his first act of civil disobedience by supporting Indian farmers who wanted to grow rice, not the indigo demanded by English planters.
- Only in the late fifteenth century did mapmakers color the seas blue. And even today, as Radiolab made clear, not everyone thinks the sky is blue.
You see? By writing a second post, I got to keep all I knew on blue!
And now I fear we must bid blue and this how-to adieu …