Success Tip: Write Today and Publish Tomorrow
How to trick your mind to extract fair feedback
Every writer has a writing procedure, stages that he follows, or a process that became his routine after writing tens of articles.
Turning your witting stages into a routine is lucrative. It saves time and effort because your brain starts dealing spontaneously with frequent situations.
Your unconsciousness takes care of the little details and preserves the smoothness of the movement between stages; while you focus on the content of the story.
Those habits can be irrelevant to the writing process. For example, preparing a drink, listening to Beethoven, setting the mood, etc.
Or it can be relevant to it. For instance, brainstorming, listing the main points, writing the first draft, etc.
In this article, I will suggest a habit that was beneficial for my articles. I call it ‘write today and publish tomorrow’.
The name of the habit explains itself. If I wrote an article today, I do not publish it until the next day.
The reason behind this behavior is psychological. I attempt to trick my mind to give myself unbiased feedback about my article.
Once I finish writing an article, I could not give myself fair feedback. I would either be very favorable or very unfavorable. In both cases, I could not be sure if the article is good enough to be published.
There are many reasons behind this state of mind. Firstly, the fatigue. Writing demands a huge mental effort. It is hours of squeezing the mind to generate ideas, styles, and synonyms. Sometimes, especially in journalism, it requires investigations and researches.
Therefore, when you finish writing your piece, your mind will need some rest. Consequently, when you ask about feedback during that critical moment, it fails you.
Secondly, when you read your article directly after finishing writing it, your mind will judge it as a product of its own. In other words, it will judge it on a special scale, which is different than the one it uses to judge others’ writing.
In this case, your mind could either be boastful and give you positive feedback even if your article is not good enough, or cynical and give you negative feedback even if your article is good enough.
There are two tips to solve this dilemma. The first is to send your piece to a friend who could provide you with fair feedback. If you are lucky, you may find someone willing to provide you with unbiased and helpful feedback every time you need it.
I believe that finding someone with those characteristics is very rare. You cannot keep bothering someone by asking him to revise your draft every couple of days. And even if that person exists, he may not be qualified to give you helpful feedback.
Thus, the second tip is more favorable. ‘Write today and publish tomorrow’.
Once you finish writing, shut down your computer and give your brain some rest. You can do any activity except editing your article. Just forget about it until the next day.
The next day, read your article again! I assure you; your mind will give you fair feedback. It will receive it like someone else’s article and revise it on that basis.
This is how you trick your mind to extract fair feedback without bothering someone else.
