Listening to your writing

January 18, 2023

Listening to your writing

You can learn to evaluate your own writing. This is one of the most important skills I learned from my best mentor, the late Ron Kenner. He was an excellent freelance editor.

I was struggling with revisions, not seeing what should be changed or, if I did see it, not knowing how to rewrite it. Ron, knowing I was a cellist, said, “When you’re playing the cello, you can tell when you’ve played a wrong note.”

I agreed.

“When you read through something you’ve written, you’ll also notice where it feels and sounds wrong.”

Sure enough, those passages jumped out at me as not being quite right. And, as I listened to what I was writing while revising, I could also tell if something was right or not.

You don’t need to be a musician to be able to detect weak spots in your writing. All people have a sense of what rings true and what doesn’t. You just have to believe in this ability and search for it within yourself. This process may take some time, but it’s important to persevere.

Eventually you’ll notice that your writer’s “ear” is sharper, and that evaluating and revising are easier.

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