Nothing humbles a writer like reviewing old work. Taking time and distance away from a piece of writing is akin to undergoing corrective (editorial) eye surgery. When
you review an article a month, a week or even a day after adding the last
sentence, you often think, "Did I really write that?" Hindsight can
be harrowing.
But sometimes it's not so bad. Sometimes a writer just needs to step away and stop
fussing with prepositions or second guessing verb choices. Writing holds an
astonishing number of traps, not the least of which is that an article can
absorb its writer, skewing her perspective. While time magnifies written mistakes,
it also sometimes restores perspective, allowing a writer to think, "This
article isn't nearly as bad as it seemed when I was deep in its throes."
This week, Manage
My Home launched Dynamic Content Experience (DCE) pages. Users searching for a
product manual now can click on a link that lets them experience the product
more vibrantly on a product page. This page contains germane
tweets from our Twitter community, suggested to do's, related products and
relevant articles.
I've experienced both sides of editorial hindsight while working with our team to
get DCE running. I spent a chunk of time flipping through our content, tagging
articles and videos as Editor's Picks for the DCE system. While I came across a
few less-than-stellar articles, I found our content breadth to be much deeper
than I anticipated. While I definitely don't want to retag all that content (I
now need new glasses), I do appreciate the opportunity the project gave me to
spend quality time revisiting our writing.
-Erin, Writer
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