Everyone Who Says You Should Never Look Back Is Wrong
Do you want your life to be a rough draft or a masterpiece?
“Edit your life frequently and ruthlessly. It’s your masterpiece after all.”
~ Nathan W. Morris, via MoveMe Quotes
You are writing the story of your life every moment of every day.
Every thought that leads to action becomes a line that ends up within one of the paragraphs, within one of the pages, within one of the chapters of your book.
Or, at least, the rough draft of your book.
There are two distinct and equally important parts of the writing process: writing and editing.
Nobody (who’s serious about their work) publishes unedited rough drafts. Why? Because the writing process itself is messy, non-linear, and chaotic; it’s an upheaval of ideas surrounding a given topic.
Editing is what takes that messy pile of ideas and properly organizes, consolidates, and simplifies them to create the intended, coherent, impactful piece.
It’s the editing that separates the wheat from the chaff; that turns ‘shitty’ into ‘elegant’; that turns messy pieces into masterpieces.