The Editing Problem

I have recently written two six page memoirs of my elder brother and younger sister for their shared birthday.  I’m now writing a memoir of my elder sister of about the same length.  I forgive myself the errors of fact; memory is a selective thing.  I have physical reasons, too, for memory lapses.  I am not so sanguine about errors of form.  I never see what needs editing for days after writing it.  I don’t understand why distance in time is necessary to find stupid grammatical or even mechanical errors in writing.  I have a similar problem with painting.  I’ll paint a picture and not see the distortions in perspective, color, until the picture has been turned to the wall for some time.  Sometimes I don’t see distortions until years later.

Since some critical facility exists in my brain, why does it take it so long to show itself?  This has become a noticeable problem for me since I started this blog.  I’ll publish something and for days after have to edit some other annoying lapse.  The thing that pushes me to write must exist in a separate part of my brain from the critical part, but you’d think that they could work together.

A hypothesis about the editing problem is that I remember too well what I intended to write and just don’t see what’s in print.  When I paint with the canvas upside down I paint more accurately – I think that this is because I paint what I see rather than what I know.  I don’t think turning the computer upside down is going to help me edit prose.

I’ll tell you next week how many times I have edited this post.  Maybe you should wait till then to read it.

Note: 4/21  Edited 5 times on 4/16.