Dr. Johnson’s advice

Samuel John­son was the pre­em­i­nent 18th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish lit­er­ary lion, essay­ist, crit­ic, and cre­ator of the most impor­tant dic­tio­nary of the Eng­lish Lan­guage until the OED. When I sent in a new man­u­script to my edi­tor, I remem­bered his words: “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fort­night, it con­cen­trates his mind won­der­ful­ly.” Which is to say, hav­ing sent in the book, I was sud­den­ly full of mis­giv­ings, enough so I went back to the book and found all kinds of things that want­ed chang­ing, from dropped words, to rephras­ing of para­graphs. I have had this hap­pen before, expe­ri­enc­ing every­thing from remorse to sim­ple embar­rass­ment, after I sent in my work.

Hav­ing remem­bered John­son, I recalled some things he said about writing.

“What is writ­ten with­out effort is in gen­er­al read with­out pleasure.”

“Read over your com­po­si­tions, and when you meet a pas­sage which you think is par­tic­u­lar­ly fine, strike it out.”

“No man but a block­head ever wrote except for money.”