Editing

Discussed in How To Take Smart Notes as “work that needs focus” — distinct from typo-fixing, it involves rephrasing sentences, deleting redundancies, and adding passages to fill holes left in the argument. The book’s point is that editing a ready rough draft is a well-defined, motivating task precisely because the finish line is in sight (“Everybody is motivated when the finish line is within reach”), in contrast to the open-ended anxiety of blank-page Writing. Elsewhere the book lists editing as just one of the many distinct attentional modes writing demands — “reading, understanding, reflecting… structuring, organizing, editing, correcting and rewriting” — each requiring a different kind of focus.

Where this appears

• How To Take Smart Notes — editing a prepared draft as the well-defined, motivating endgame of the slip-box method.