I haven't actually talked much about myself on this blog, at least not directly. I think I can safely assume 99% of the people reading this do not know that I'm currently working on a Ph.D. in Archaeology (Anthropological Archaeology to be specific but that's for another blog post). What's important to take away from that factoid about myself is that I am an adult, 32 to be exact, who has been in school for essentially my entire life. As someone who has focused their energies in the Humanities, I've done a lot of writing. If I've learned anything it's that editing matters, yet at some point, you have to pry your hands from your creation and set it free. Now if you're like me most of the time your baby goes plummeting to earth at a velocity you previously thought unthinkable but every so often it goes soaring into the blue sky. This precarious balance of editing is constant.
The first draft of anything should be rough as sandpaper.
It should contain nearly everything you have to say on the topic
But the flow may be off.
There will be lots of tangents,
You'll probably have too much information.
Second,
Third,
And more drafts is where you edit your thoughts.
Like waves crashing on the beach,
Battering the sand,
Pummeling rocks into smooth granules,
The words will be rearranged,
Punctuation and quotations,
Proper citations,
All added and subtracted as needed.
You'll carefully lift the sails of your ship in a bottle,
bundle it up like your firstborn baby,
Toss it all to sea and hope it washes ashore.
