Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fungus

Music: Plain White T's - Hey There Delilah

I had an 'aha!' moment today over something that I knew about in theory but not in practicality. I'm not sure if that sentence is correct, but I think you get what I mean.

So, every instructor I've ever had has told me that if you have the time, you should always let your work sit for a few days before editing so that you can read it almost as a first time reader and pick up errors.

I had been working quite a bit on a screenplay and I was getting so frustrated with the errors in it that they became all that I could see. I put it away for about a week and re-read it today. Instead of finding new errors, I found that the time away from the script allowed me to see the parts of it that I really liked again. I could still see the things I wanted to change, but they weren't all that I saw. I totally remembered why I loved the story so much and all of the things that I love about how I wrote it, not just the things I hate. It totally made me more gung-hoe (is that actually a word?) about putting more work into it to fix the errors.

Putting your work away and pulling it out later to fix errors is a good thing. But pulling it out and going 'hey, I really like that!' feels so much better.