Stewing time
Giles Turnbull
Unlike Douglas Adams, I have respect for deadlines. I wouldn't make a
very good living if I didn't. Pretty much everyone I write for needs
to have the copy by a certain day, and heaven help me if I fail to get
it to them in time. At the very least, I'll get a telling off, but far
worse (and far more likely) is that I won't get paid, or I won't get
any future work from that client. And as all freelancers know, getting
repeat business is *much* easier than getting new business.
So, I like to ensure that I get stuff done to deadline. But I *also*
like to ensure that I deliver *good* stuff. It needs to be readable,
not have any spelling mistakes or howlers or chunks of awful writing.
Sounds like common sense, but those things are surprisingly hard to
avoid when you're writing at speed (which you often are to meet a
deadline).
Consequently, I have a system. I try, wherever possible, to get the
work finished a day before the deadline. Sometimes it might be only
half a day or in extreme cases, just a few hours, but ideally it's a
whole day.
By "finished", I mean the correct number of words written and a basic
read-through done for errors. Then I leave it to stew, overnight or
while I get on with something else. This is important, because I want
the thing I've just finished to fade from my mind. I want to forget as
much of it as possible.
Then, next morning or later that day, I re-open it and the first thing
I do is read it out loud to myself. And it's amazing how many spelling
mistakes, howlers, and chunks of awful writing that I discover, almost
every time. Having given myself time to forget, I have the opportunity
to look at the text with fresh eyes and a fresh brain and see where I
went wrong. And having got it done *before* the actual deadline, I
have the time to re-write and fix things where necessary. Then a final
read-through, then file it.
Another positive consequence of this is that sometimes, I end up
filing the copy *before* the deadline, which usually makes
commissioning editors very happy. They tend to be very busy people, so
anything that makes their life easier (like copy arriving before it's
due) is a good thing as far as they are concerned.