Monday Mastery: This is the work
On messy thinking and beautiful writing.
Welcome to Monday Mastery, a series designed to shift your perspective, teach you new techniques, and help you become a more effective writer, one tip at a time.
Point of view.
Voice
Human soul.
Whatever name you give it, it’s a stamp you put on your writing that makes it distinct — and distinctly yours.
I sometimes edit novels for a mid-sized publisher. Now, after many edited books under my belt, even if the publisher chose not to disclose who wrote the book they sent me to edit, I could tell you who the author was. An author’s words have a feel to them — a rhythm, a cadence, a heartbeat. It’s unmistakeable.
Your writing is as unique as your fingerprint.
And it makes the world a more beautiful place.
(Perhaps this is why I’ve been so compelled to talk about the use of AI for writing so much for the last two years.)
Writers — and want-to-be writers — often lament to me how messy their first drafts are. Misspellings, poor word choice, confusing flow, too-long paragraphs.
I tell them that this is the work.
Writing is thinking.
They put their thoughts down in a messy first draft. Now in the second draft, they streamline their thinking by editing their words.
No writer produces perfection on the first go.
Because thinking is messy.
Let it be messy.
Then make it better.
But let it be yours to wrestle with, yours to craft, yours to create.
So the world can get a glimpse of that beautiful human soul of yours.