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This was fairly useful, if not amazingly insightful. I think that "give yourself some space" is by far the most helpful tip. At any given moment, in any given
by girzel 6y ago
This was fairly useful, if not amazingly insightful.
I think that "give yourself some space" is by far the most helpful tip. At any given moment, in any given state of mind, you'll only ever have an imperfect perspective on what it is you're trying to say, and how well you've succeeded in saying it.
Waiting until you're in a different frame of mind, then revisiting the piece, is the best way of "layering" your own ideas – filling in gaps, considering new perspectives, coming to new realizations.
I think it's something that has to be done with every piece of writing. You either get someone else to look at it and do it for you (if you don't have time), or let enough time pass that you have (in a sense) become "someone else" yourself, and read again.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoWhat I do, is post it after what I consider a “complete” edit, but I don’t advertise it. I then spend a day or two, revisiting it, and making tweaks. I suspect that my biggest issue is overuse of the passive voice. I was pretty much trained into it (long story), and it tends to be my default.
- OliverJones 6y agoExactly. For me the tl;dr of this article is: If you don't have a person to edit your stuff, read it over with fresh eyes. This goes for anything from late-night texts to 100K - word books.
- crb3 6y agoI get this by writing in minimal-markdown text, then pushing it to HTML and reading it in a browser. The reformatting breaks the prior spacial relationships of the words; swapping the text editor for the browser framing breaks the context.