It’s time to watch baseball.

I had sub­mit­ted a revised draft of a nov­el to my edi­tor, with the under­stand­ing that it would be a few weeks—at the earliest—when I received a response, and cri­tique. That said, I was fair­ly sure the major work had been done and, oth­er than minor revi­sions, the work was good. Most impor­tant of all, I was sat­is­fied with my work.

As I hap­pened, for a vari­ety of rea­sons, the edi­tor’s response took longer than antic­i­pat­ed. Thus, after per­haps a month of dis­en­gage­ment, I picked up the man­u­script and read it.

I was horrified.

So many weak sen­tences. Word rep­e­ti­tions. Even some plot pot­holes and con­tra­dic­tions. Weak char­ac­ter motivations.

This was bad work.

An emer­gency email to my edi­tor. “Stop! I need to do some seri­ous revisions.”

“Okay. Sure. But the dead­line remains .….”

Back to work.

But—what had hap­pened? Why, at one time was I “sat­is­fied with my work” and a month lat­er “this was bad work”?

What hap­pened was time and distance.

There is a great con­tra­dic­tion in the writ­ing process, at least for me. While writ­ing, I wish to be thor­ough­ly engaged, immersed one hun­dred per­cent in my char­ac­ters, while main­tain­ing the momen­tum of mov­ing the plot for­ward. All in all, pro­ceed­ing as fast as I can. On the oth­er hand, being thor­ough­ly engaged, immersed one hun­dred per­cent, main­tain­ing the momen­tum, and pro­ceed­ing as fast as I can, is all about sub­jec­tiv­i­ty. But doing nothing—stepping back from my work for a decent peri­od of time, gives me dis­tance, objectivity.

I recall Natal­ie Bab­bitt once telling me that there comes a time, when work­ing on a man­u­script, that you are only adjust­ing the com­mas, chang­ing a word or two. “That,” she said, “is the time to watch base­ball.” The truth is, how­ev­er, it is very hard to do noth­ing. It is hard­er when pay­ment for the book (pay­ing the mort­gage) is wrapped up in the true com­ple­tion of a book. But doing noth­ing is, I think, a key part of the process.

I like to cook, which in my case is not being inven­tive, but fol­low­ing a good recipe. And when I make a good stew—perfect for Col­orado’s moun­tain winters—quite often the recipe sug­gests, “Bet­ter the day after you make it.”

That’s true for writ­ing as well. Time can often be the best editor.