Walk Away

The puppy got me up early last Friday (5:30 is much earlier than I would like), and the peaceful sunshine made me start thinking about my own work that I was editing on Thursday evening. And I had a bit of a brainwave.

The fluffy culprit

Sometimes I find that when I'm editing my own work, I get wrapped up in commas and semicolons and I forget the more substantive edits that I need to do. How are my framing, logic, and argument shaping up? What do I need to say in the next paragraphs to make sure I have everything written clearly? Will my audience understand what I'm saying at all?

These are really important editorial questions, and sometimes they're not easy to get to when you're sitting in front of your screen. So go for a walk with the dog, have a cup of coffee on the patio, maybe lift some weights, and spend some of that time with your work in your mind.

You can take this advice even further. Everyone has their favourite place to work-- I work best in at my desk in my apartment. But sometimes I change it up and the new environment around me seems to make writing and editorial juices flow differently. That's been hard to do in the last year with the COVID-19 pandemic confining us to our homes, but I'm looking forward to a morning in a coffee shop somewhere soon.