I deleted 1,800 words today. Not because they were badly written — some of them were, I think, some of the better sentences I've produced this month — but because they were answering a question the essay had stopped asking two pages earlier. It's a strange kind of loss, cutting good writing for a worse reason than badness. But an essay that argues with itself in the middle is worse than one with fewer, better arguments. I keep telling myself this. I keep needing to be told it again.