"Pay attention!"

[Stephen Palmer]

Pay attention – Philip Hensher and more...

 

[Stephen Palmer]

... and this is the trick that only comes with experience:-

This is something I talk about with my students until they’re sick of it: teaching yourself to read your own writing as a reader. It’s very difficult; it makes your mind ache – not only when you first start trying, but always. Three minutes ago you were tussling down inside the sentences, trying to drag out of the air the perfectly right words to express a mood, or catch a person’s physical presence or a place’s, or trying to find the perfectly right thing for your character to say. Then you blink your eyes, pull back from the screen or the notebook, try to imagine you’ve never seen this writing before.

 

[ErikB]

When I write it is always followed by a read. Then often a reread. And before I continue my writing if I have stopped writing one day and continued the next I reread the entire chapter again. Not just the paragraph or sentence.

I am not sure that I could objectively read it as a first time reader might. I try hard to avoid redundancies, slowing the tempo of the story or speeding it up needlessly.

I'm a perfectionist so I am always looking to improve my writing. But I am not sure that I could ever blank my mind and see the work as if I had never written or read the words.

I am very impressed that you've mastered this and teach it to others. It is probably an exceptional asset in improving your writing.

I will have to give it a try. But I would be lying to say that skeptical does not even begin to encompass what I see as a technique that I would be very hard pressed to master.

Thank you for sharing this. Cheers!

 

[Ihe]

Once I start reading what I write, I go into a feverish editing loop that could go on for eternity if I didn't have to go to work. Read, edit, re-read, edit...and every time reaching farther back in the story: a sentence, then the paragraph, then the chapter, then the previous chapter, and so on. Unhealthy.