There’s nothing worse than those guys who sit and give you advice, but seem to forget it all when they themselves run into the same problem they have been advising about. Like the guys who, with supreme confidence, tell you exactly how to pick up girls but always seem to be the ones slumped over a bar stool crying into a mojito by themselves at the end of the night.
Those guys suck.
So in an effort to show that the advice I have been giving isn’t just magically pulled out of my metaphorical ass: Behold! An example of me literally practicing what I preach.
A nonfiction article of mine about the plights of shaving went live today on “The Good Men Project” – http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/the-good-life-shaving-face/
Despite it only being slightly over 1000 words, this piece was part of a pretty extensive revision cycle:
1. The first draft was finished on February 19, 2012. It was roughly 1500 words.
2. I trimmed it down to 1300 words, cleaned it up dramatically, and completed the second draft of February 27, 2012.
3. I submit this piece to a workshop of 10 of my Hopkins peers in the fabulous Cathy Alter‘s “Contemporary Nonfiction” class on April 10, 2012. It was about 1275 words at the time.
4. Based on that feedback, I revised, removed, changed, restructured, and added to the existing draft. Total word count, 1150.
5. Revised again, chopping out irrelevant sections, and revising some of the jokes to be more absurd, because hey, why not?
6. Finished one more round of changes, cleaned up the grammar and formatting, and submitted it to The Good Men Project on May 22, 2012.
7. Article was accepted and published on August 9, 2012. Final word count: 1041.
So there you have it. A single 1041 word article took about 4 whole months to draft, revise, pitch, and publish.
Good things come to those who wait. The good news is, you can work on tons of other things concurrently.
Get to writing (or revising)!
This is a picture of me writing this post. A little meta-POV for your Thursday.
