When you have conquered the problems of finding a time and place to write, you may be surprised to discover that your next biggest battle is with your inner editor. This potential troublemaker is capable of destroying your work more swiftly than you can type or write your ideas.
On duty, that eager inner editor will peruse and pick at every letter, every word, every sentence, and every paragraph. Your inner editor will add, rearrange, and scratch out entire pages. Your story, article, or book will start to develop, then parts -- and potentially all -- of it will be swept away like the sand beneath your feet in the rushing tide at the beach. Beginning to write, then interrupting to inspect, to analyze, to evaluate, and to rewrite line by line can destroy a work.
In Portraits from Memory, Bertrand Russell describes this exasperating problem in "How I Write": "When I was young each fresh piece of serious work used to seem to me for a time -- perhaps a long time -- to go beyond my powers. I would fret that it was never going to come right. I would make one unsatisfying attempt after another, and in the end have to discard them all. . . ." How can you gain control?
Conquering Your Inner Editor
1. Whenever you write, write freely. Send your "inner editor" on a holiday tour to some mountain retreat far from your inner writer's beach when you are writing warmups or stories or articles or books. Otherwise you may never complete your work. For short pieces, finish your first draft in one sitting, if possible, without ever stopping to edit.
If you have the luxury of time, put away your first draft for several days, then return with fresh eyes to revise and polish your work.
Editing Vigorously at the Right Time
2. Now invite this powerful force -- your inner editor -- to come forth to prune, rearrange, and polish your work to make it sparkle.
3. Ask yourself about the development of the introduction, the body, and the conclusion of your work. Breathe more life into the areas that are weak. Back up your statements with facts, figures, and statistics from your own original research or from other reliable up-to-date documents. Ask yourself about the development of the tone and maintaining or changing it as you desire.
4. Analyze your organization. Look for broken details. Do you begin and finish your thoughts? Do you introduce a concept and say a bit, then drop the idea only to come back to it later?
5. Always use the best word to convey your meaning. Take a look at your entire work for clarity of expression and parallel constructions. Check your transitions. Avoid juxtaposing unrelated ideas.
6. Study your presentation. Read your work aloud. Discard lifeless verbs. Notice word sounds and sentence cadences. Create music to your readers ears. Use some short sentences and some long sentences for variety.
7. Be careful not to omit important modifiers and clarifiers.
8. Check for repetition, excessive modifiers, and excessive wordiness.
Russell shares, "There are some maxims which I think might be commended to writers of expository prose. First: never use a long word if a short word will do. Second: if you want to make a statement with a great many qualifications, put some of the qualifications in separate sentences. Third: do not let the beginning of your sentence lead the reader to an expectation which is contradicted by the end."
9. Follow time-tested, standard rules for punctuation. Avoid the amateurish notion that you will punctuate however and wherever you wish. Find other ways to be creative.
10. Sight check your spelling before using a spell checker. Teamed up the two approaches to uncover misspelled words produce far better results than either method alone.
Reviewing What You Have Written
Have you not only presented your ideas with clarity, but also have you written with energy and power to rivet the attention of your readers? Do your ideas pulsate with life? Have you engraved images and expressions in the minds of your readers? Will memorable sentences come back to them? Is your information thought-provoking and encouraging? Will your readers be supported and endeared by what you have said?
When you can free yourself to write without early intrusions from your inner editor and then finally channel the power of your inner editor to rework your materials at just the right time, you will be amazed with the sparkle your writing can possess when you can balance these mighty forces toward a common goal.
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