This week: Take as many swings as you need

Playwright Neil Simon has written, "In baseball, you only get three swings and you're out. In rewriting, you get almost as many swings as you want and you know, sooner or later, you'll hit the ball."

OK, we business writers can't always take as many swings as we want. But we can almost always take more than we think we  can. Isn't that important e-mail message worth another five minutes of your time? If so, don't click "Send" as soon as you've drafted it. Keep it for a few minutes, or a few hours. (One trick is to not fill in the "To" line until after you've revised. That'll keep an unrevised draft from getting away from you.) Then come back and spend five minutes on it. Maybe do that again. Maybe again.

This week, take as many swings as you need to hit the ball out of the park.

Comments

[Norm Leigh]

Kenneth,
I'd say you've knocked one out of the park with your advice on taking a few more swings at copy before sending it. I advise my writing students to this. In fact, I even incorporate rewrites into their assignments. But it's not just students who need to take a few more swings at their work. We all must if we want to spot grammar, usage, punctuation, content and a host of other flaws in our copy. After nearly 25 years of professional writing, I still catch glitches in my own writing. I've blogged on this before, but you've inspired me to revisit this important issue in an upcoming post. Thanks.

[Norm Leigh]

Well, nothing like inserting a grammar flaw in a comment on checking your copy carefully before sending it. In reading my recent comment to your post, I see I left the verb "do" out of the second sentence. That error survived even after at least three "swings" at the copy. Looks like I'm out. Besides taking more swings at our copy, we should also consider bringing in a designated hitter -- someone to read over what we write, when practical. Writers are the worst editors of their own copy. (Let's hope there's not a goof in this post!)

[Kenneth W. Davis]

Norm, I'm happy that I'm not the only supposedly expert writer who makes rookie mistakes.

And you're absolutely right about designated hitters. I'm against the DH rule in baseball, but I enthusiastically support it in the writing game!