Legal Writing

The key to revising is looking at your work as your reader will. That requires objectivity.

Have you ever had the experience of reading a piece of writing that you did as a child or adolescent? In my own experience, reading my oldest writing is both embarrassing and fun?fun because the writing sounds as if it were written by a totally different person. And of course it was.

In business, of course, we don't have the luxury of waiting 10, 20, or 30 years to read our draft again. So we have to force ourselves to get something of the same distance, the same objectivity. Even in five minutes we can trick ourselves. We can print out our draft, set it down without reading it, and head for the restroom, vending machine, or coffee pot. We we return, we can say to ourselves, "Oh, there's the sales letter I've been putting off writing. Someone must have drafted it for me! Hmm, let me read it. Well, it's not bad, but it's certainly not up to my standards yet. I'm not willing to put my name on it now. But at least it's been written! All I have to do is revise it until it's good enough for my signature."

This week, after you draft each piece of writing, walk away from it. When you come back, try to pretend you're seeing it for the first time.