By: Jim Taylor

Do-or-die deadlines


If it weren’t for deadlines, I probably would never get anything written. If it weren’t for deadlines, my writing could be a lot better.

        Both of those statements are true.

        Deadlines force me to write. And deadlines often force me to submit material that deserves more work.

        Almost always, when someone criticizes some component in one of my columns, it’s a column I’ve written in haste.

        The critics tell me that I failed to do adequate research. I didn’t check my sources. I missed the point. And all those objections may be correct.

        But the real problem was that I didn’t do enough thinking. I got an idea; I rushed into writing it; I didn’t take enough time to evaluate alternate perspectives.

        Sometimes I don’t have much choice. My life is not limited to sitting in front of a computer screen, pecking out prose. I also have commitments to my wife, to my daughter and granddaughter, to my friends, to my church, to community organizations…

        Sometimes those commitments pile up, and writing columns gets shoved into the back seat.



Writing, and rewriting

 Ideally, writing has three stages.

        First, I get an idea. It catches my fancy. I need to gather information about it, to determine that the idea has some validity. I need facts, figures, examples. Some of those I can supply from memory. For others, I go to my library or to the Internet.

        Second, I take that raw material and turn it into words.

        Third, I revise.

        Some people – those who tend to turn into a blob of quivering Jello when confronted by a blank page – think that writing is the hard part. It isn’t.

        Revising is. My friend and colleague Doug Hodgkinson asked me once how often I rewrote my columns. Typically, about four times, I told him.

        And that takes time. Enough time for me to see my precious prose as a stranger. To read each word as if I had never seen it before, to recognize when a favourite phrase might mislead, might even offend, a potential reader.

        And particularly, to see my text from the perspective of someone who doesn’t already agree with me.



In search of epiphanies

 I don’t mean making every sentence as bland as tapioca pudding. Nor do I mean resorting to the common media practice of quoting conflicting opinions, valid or not, and then claiming professional neutrality.

        All that practice does is deny the reality that one view may be right, the other wrong.

        No—an idea needs to be argued vigorously, without weaselling. But if it fails to hear, to understand, the views of those see things differently, they will simply brush it off.

Preaching to the converted gives a great boost to the ego. And those people may need affirmation of their views. But the satisfaction of pleasing those who are already on side pales compared to that moment of epiphany when a reader or hearer gains a new insight.

        I would love to polish those thoughts further. Unfortunately, I can’t. I have a deadline to meet.

*****************************************
Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
*****************************************