Let the text breathe

Letting the text breathe allows you to clear your mind and see what you actually wrote.

An article published this week in Nature has received a lot of attention and shares online. It calls for scientists to take time to think. The article mentions that we are distracted by social media, but comments have highlighted other issues too, such as administrative load and overload.

There are many aspects to this problem, but I remembered a text I wrote some time ago about my understanding of what “let a text breathe” means and why some activities inevitably require time and cannot be accelerated.

I decided to republish it. It went like this

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One day, while correcting a thesis, I had an epiphany and discovered what ‘let the text breathe’ meant.

The metaphor is very intuitive, and no author would question its importance, regardless of why or how it works. But, as someone who likes to think from first principles, I started wondering: why does a text need to breathe?

Countless times at FLIP (the international literature festival in Paraty, Brazil), I’ve seen experienced writers describe in a completely opaque way how they decide when a text was good: “I read and re-read, wrote and re-wrote, until I thought it was good.”

They had a process and a criteria, but unlike their writing, they couldn’t explain it clearly.

Then I realized it is US who need to take a break from the text.

When we’re writing, our reading of the text is influenced by the ideas we have in our minds. We write, believing we are successfully putting everything in our heads onto paper. We stop to read what we wrote to see if it’s clear, but we look without really seeing: our vision doesn’t replicate what’s on paper but what’s in our heads.

Have you seen that text written with only parts of the words in place, but it doesn’t prevent us from fully understanding the idea? It even makes me nervous about how automatic reading is, despite so many letters being out of place. Haven’t seen it? I’ll copy it here before concluding:

“Aocrcnidg to a rsearech at an Eglnish uvieinrsty, it dseon’t mtetar in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iportmatn tihng is taht the fsrit and lsat ltteers are in the rhigt palce. The rset can be a ttoal mses, and you can sitll raed it wihotut pobelrm. Tihs is baceuse we dno’t raed ecah lteter idnivdaully, but the wrod as a wohle. Azimang!”

You need to put a text away until your mind forgets what you wanted to say when you were writing, so you can finally read what you actually wrote instead of ‘reading’ what you meant to say.

How long should you let it rest? I think a month-long vacation would do.

First Published in July 2012 at ‘Você que é Biólogo…’ in portuguese