It’s one of those simple Edit Tips that make you roll your eyes when you realize you hadn’t already thought of it yourself.

Big.

Go

BIG.

When you are reviewing your work over and over, editing yourself into perfection, your eyeballs will start to hate you. Your eyeballs will hate you, your brain will be mean to you, you’ll start seeing spots and missing errors. The next logical reaction will be to beat your keyboard until your arms are bloody stumps. (Remember this guy?!)

 

 

Walk away.

Do something else for a while. Something that doesn’t require deep concentration or eye strain. Certainly nothing on a computer screen, and preferably no reading at all. Go for a walk, breathe deeply, nap. (I’m always a fan of the nap.) When you’re sufficiently rejuvenated and ready to get back to editing, there’s one simple thing you can do:

Change

your

font

size.

Your brain will see a whole new picture and you can begin your editing anew, your eyeballs no longer lazily skimming over familiar patterns and missing errors. I also like to change the color of the text I am reading; usually going few tonal steps down from black to a medium grey is enough to trick my brain. If I change fonts, I make sure to swap between a generic and jagged Times New Roman to a soft and rounded Arial or Calibri.

But, again… simplest of all is to change the size of your text.

Go

BIG.

 

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Bonus B, quote:

Boredom is bullshit. It’s just for lazy people with no imagination.

~ Adam Sackler, GIRLS, HBO®
[Actor: Adam Driver]