Come Back Later

I was talking with my writing soulmate today. She was excited because she had been particularly productive. She was telling me about her various endeavors, one of which caught my attention.

She was revising her poetry. It was stuff she had written months, if not years, ago, and never touched (and unsurprisingly was never happy with). Today, however, she looked at her poetry and knew exactly what to do with it. All of the revisions, all of the rewriting, every possible aspect just came to her and she was able to create something that she was actually happy with.

This is an important story because it perfectly demonstrates something that writing teachers will always say. When you write something, you are too close to it. You cannot revise or edit it. Heck, you usually can't even proofread it worth a damn. You need to leave it alone and come back to it when you aren't so close.

Now, that advice is good, but it was always strange to me. How is it that we can make writing better by becoming estranged to it? The answer, simply enough, is that we aren't. Your brain never stops working. You ever try to think of the name of a song and you just can't? Ever notice how it always pops in your head sooner or later? It's the same thing. When you write something, your brain knows when it's not quite right and it will continuously work on fixing it, even if you don't realize it. When it's ready, you get a message to go back to your writing and you will have all of the corrections you need, or at least the most important piece that allows you to figure out the rest.

So, when you reach a point of frustration over not being able to get your writing just right, leave it alone. Take a break and come back to it when you're ready. If there is something you remember writing a while ago, try pulling it out and see if you know what to do now. If you don't get anything for it, then put it back in storage and write something else while you figure it out.