Dear Former Self [work]
Aug. 15th, 2022 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebeccmeisterI am revisiting a manuscript I've had a hard time touching in a while. Time is a tool, for writers. Sometimes we can instead attain distance from a piece of writing by handing it over to other people, who can help us discover the intellectual ruts and pitfalls. But at other times, there isn't an other to whom we can make the request.
With time, we can reapproach with new and different eyes. Between my last visit and this one, I've reviewed more manuscripts, and I have taught the scientific writing course here three times. Both have helped me practice and articulate what constitutes a more effective piece of scientific writing. What now jumps out most readily from this old manuscript is how plodding my text was.
The downfall of plodding text is that it dooms exciting findings. If it won't sparkle for me, why would I expect it to sparkle for anyone else?
One of the other issues I've been thinking about between then and now, is how to best reframe the work. The old intellectual frame never fit well to begin with, but it was hard for me to articulate why, because I had less of an intellectual context when I wrote the manuscript. A funny part of that is that some of this wasn't really my fault; when I first wrote the manuscript, some of the intellectual context didn't exist in the way it does now. I have also learned a lot more biology between then and now, biology that fits better and will better support the work.
In any case, blogging about writing is an excellent way to procrastinate from the more painful work of actually working on the writing.
With time, we can reapproach with new and different eyes. Between my last visit and this one, I've reviewed more manuscripts, and I have taught the scientific writing course here three times. Both have helped me practice and articulate what constitutes a more effective piece of scientific writing. What now jumps out most readily from this old manuscript is how plodding my text was.
The downfall of plodding text is that it dooms exciting findings. If it won't sparkle for me, why would I expect it to sparkle for anyone else?
One of the other issues I've been thinking about between then and now, is how to best reframe the work. The old intellectual frame never fit well to begin with, but it was hard for me to articulate why, because I had less of an intellectual context when I wrote the manuscript. A funny part of that is that some of this wasn't really my fault; when I first wrote the manuscript, some of the intellectual context didn't exist in the way it does now. I have also learned a lot more biology between then and now, biology that fits better and will better support the work.
In any case, blogging about writing is an excellent way to procrastinate from the more painful work of actually working on the writing.
