Take time to make your writing better

Jan 23, 2012 | Better Blogging

“Whew!”

The blog post is done and now it’s time to send it off to the world. Don’t do it. Take a little time to make sure it’s the best you can do.

Let your writing rest.

Writing is emotional. Let the emotion drain away so you can view your writing dispassionately. A few minutes is good. A day is better. A week is better still. You want to be able to spot the parts you think are wonderful, but that don’t make the post better, and remove them.

Read your writing out loud.

Reading your writing aloud will alert you to tongue- and thought-twisting things you can fix before you send your post on its way. Even better, have someone read it out loud to you.

Run a final spell check.

Yes, one more. If you’ve made any changes at all, you may have introduced errors.

Repeat as needed.

When you’re sure that you’ve done as well as possible, hit that “Publish” button.

Whew!