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.
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.
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