Writing with your Eyes Closed

Dear Sammy,

I’ve stumbled into something new. When I write, I find myself rewriting my sentences along the way. If feels slow and painful, and the edited words no longer feel like me. A few weeks ago, while writing a long note to my team, I closed my eyes so that I couldn’t edit along the way. When I opened them, I noticed a few things:

• I wrote twice as fast. I wasn’t writing and editing at the same time. I was just free to write. If a sentence no longer made sense as I was writing, I hit “return” and started a new sentence knowing that I could fix things later. My internal editor would have its time.
• There was less to edit than I expected. I imagined opening my eyes to a bloody mess. Instead, they opened to a slightly-higher-than-normal number of typos and some formatting error. It took me about 5 minutes to edit — cumulatively, far less time than it would take me to edit along the way.
• I was writing to express, not to impress. Most importantly, I actually wrote more clearly. It was almost as if closing my eyes removed a filter between my intention and my words. Hemingway used alcohol to quiet his internal critic, but I like to write in the morning.

Same idea, different approach

By the time you can read this letter, you might not be typing at all. You’ll be dictating through your voice, or even cooler, through your thoughts. If your mind gets noisy like mine does, you’ll need a few hacks to quiet it down. This one works, give it a try.

With eyes closed,

Daddy