Have you ever considered how much ego is involved with writing? Think about it. Why else would it be so hard to show people a rough draft of whatever we’re working on? Why else would we need to polish up the paragraph we just wrote before moving on? But how self-defeating!
If you’ve followed this blog or look at past posts, you’ll know that I’m a strong advocate of sloppy writing. The Sloppy Letters to Linden I ask my clients to write have helped them to find their voices as well as to churn out content that’s authentic and not in the least self-conscious. It’s also copy that can be dropped into a manuscript or turned into a blog post. But sloppy writing needs to go beyond sloppy letters. We need sloppy drafts. And that’s the work that you should be showing your writing coach, editor or reader.
Yup, I’m suggesting that you sideline your ego on this one in the name of efficiency, sanity and ultimately ego protection.
There’s nothing worse that working super hard on a piece of writing, getting it to where you think it’s 95 percent done and getting shot down. I know because it’s happened to me. Here’s the problem. You’re the writer. You’re so close to your draft (as well as whatever inspired it) that you can’t see it properly. Take a newspaper and bring it up to your face. The closer it gets, the blurrier the type. By the time it hits your nose, you can’t read a thing. You’re too close.
The same principle applies to your writing. You need an outside perspective from someone who hasn’t been immersed in your project, your experience and/or your field. So why on earth would you try to polish that rough draft before you hand it over? The initial feedback you want is not whether your writing sings, but whether your idea and your approach work. If those need tinkering, then a good portion of that beautiful prose you’ve worked so hard to polish (to say nothing of the time you devoted to all that editing) is going to be swallowed up by your computer’s delete button.
So the next time you think to yourself, “I can’t send my writing coach this rough a draft,” push your ego away and hit the Send button. Let’s nail the approach before we worry about language.
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