On Burrow's Writing Fiction

The excerpts of Burrow's "Writing Fiction" on the topics of detail through concrete language, active voice, and rhythm are incredibly inciteful. I wish I would have read this before even starting to attempt fiction writing, unfortunately I did not have the chance to read this until today. I always thought that by cramming as much detail as possible into a story, you would not only easily meet length requirements but you would also have a better story. Burroway has provided several helpful and educating examples that shows this is not true! You must be selective in the detail you choose to provide. If I'd have realized this sooner, I might not have taken to fiction writing with such impatience. All this time, I've been taking the time to provide details about material appearances and pleasing sensory images when I should have been paying more attention to details that actually develop characters and places. Like Burroway pointed out, there are thousands of tall, blue-eyed, blond-haired twenty-two year olds in the world, but you must explain to the reader what makes this character significant.
If the reader is indifferent, it's probably due to the author's lack of sensory and conrete guidance also. If all you provide as an author are generalizations and abstractness, the reader will never see how or why it is that way. He was happy that she wrote him does not show anything. But His heart skipped a beat upon opening the mailbox  to reveal a letter addressed from "the one that got away." is the kind of concrete detail that matters and advances the story. As Borroway pointed out, you could spend all day writing about abstract generalizations and it would take at least twice as long to gain the readers trust. So, although it may take more time and effort to think of concrete examples that show rather than tell, you will get your point  across in less "story."
I also thought Burroway's section on prose rhythm was very interesting. I never really thought about rhythm within a story before and I only ever considered it in poetry and music. But it's true, if you want to, say, portay a character or scene in a fast-paced, urgent way, it makes sense to create a multitude of shorter sentences rather than long, complex ones. Or the oppososite, if you want to create a "slow" image, you should use longer, more complex sentences. Fascinating!
This information was definately helpful and I will take advantage of it!