My stupid [Preview&Publish] compulsion

[burgwad]

Can anybody relate to this?

The only way I can seem to get my monkey brain to sit still and do revisions is if I send my piece all the way to the "Preview&Publish" screen, where I can immerse myself in the fantasy that I am my own most insufferable reader. This ultimately results in my endlessly going and back and forth between the Prev&Pub page and the editing page, as I spot fix things one or two at a time. It is self-injurious behavior, and makes an already tedious process absurd. But it is the way the monkey works.

 

[TheLobster]

Can anybody relate to this?

The only way I can seem to get my monkey brain to sit still and do revisions is if I send my piece all the way to the "Preview&Publish" screen, where I can immerse myself in the fantasy that I am my own most insufferable reader. This ultimately results in my endlessly going and back and forth between the Prev&Pub page and the editing page, as I spot fix things one or two at a time. It is self-injurious behavior, and makes an already tedious process absurd. But it is the way the monkey works.

I do my final pass or two in the preview, but I make all changes in the original file. There is no endless back and forth this way, and when I’m done with a pass I just copy/paste the changed text into the form again.

 

[lovecraft68]

I do it like I do everything else; ride or die, I write it, I'll make a pass then let if fly, if there's mistakes so be it, I'm not going to obsess over it.

Some readers don't care, some do, but what I come back to is you could post a perfect story and someone with a name like "Billylovesboobies' will pick apart the story they paid nothing for.

 

[mirafrida]

Yes, I do this. Nowadays, driven by hard-won experience, I try to avoid starting this loop until the story truly is very, very close to done, but it's still hard to avoid altogether.

For me, at least, any time I see a story in a new format, I'm able to read it with a bit of a fresh eye, and that helps with polishing. So, to forestall some of the preview-page silliness, I will do things to change it up when it's close to final, like viewing the story in "Reader Mode" in Word, or saving it as HTML and viewing in the browser.

Even so, I agree, there is still something qualitatively different about having it on the verge of being published, knowing it's about to be taken out of your hands and thrown into the wild.

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

I used to do this, but now I end up using the preview screen and then just scanning in publish to make sure all the tags and HTML shit is done right.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

My stories are written and edited in Word, then copy-and-pasted to Lit. I find it helps with final edits (‘final’ is kind of floppy as I often do three or more) if I can see what my readers will see.

 

[YmaOHyd]

My stories are written and edited in Word, then copy-and-pasted to Lit. I find it helps with final edits (‘final’ is kind of floppy as I often do three or more) if I can see what my readers will see.

That's what I do as well. What I need to start doing as I've started experimenting with formatting is to do my final read-through on mobile.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Can anybody relate to this?

The only way I can seem to get my monkey brain to sit still and do revisions is if I send my piece all the way to the "Preview&Publish" screen, where I can immerse myself in the fantasy that I am my own most insufferable reader. This ultimately results in my endlessly going and back and forth between the Prev&Pub page and the editing page, as I spot fix things one or two at a time. It is self-injurious behavior, and makes an already tedious process absurd. But it is the way the monkey works.

It's easier to do it in edit mode. It's close enough to the final product and you can make changes on the fly. Then you can do a pass or two in Preview/Publish mode at the end. It's surprising how much still shows up wrong in those last passes.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I used to do this, but now I end up using the preview screen and then just scanning in publish to make sure all the tags and HTML shit is done right.

Yeah, you really need to check the HTML and links to see if they are correct. Some people avoid using any HTML, but it usually goes okay for me.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Can anybody relate to this?

The only way I can seem to get my monkey brain to sit still and do revisions is if I send my piece all the way to the "Preview&Publish" screen, where I can immerse myself in the fantasy that I am my own most insufferable reader. This ultimately results in my endlessly going and back and forth between the Prev&Pub page and the editing page, as I spot fix things one or two at a time. It is self-injurious behavior, and makes an already tedious process absurd. But it is the way the monkey works.

It's a good way to spot the last typos and format glitches, because your eye is seeing it differently. If you're doing it a lot, though, I'd be editing more in Word (or whatever), before you submit.

When I'm writing a story, I'm always changing font, font size and font colour - it's the same thing, makes the text look different. I find errors jump off the page - I can scan quickly, don't need to read every word.

 

[RejectReality]

It's a good way to spot the last typos and format glitches, because your eye is seeing it differently. If you're doing it a lot, though, I'd be editing more in Word (or whatever), before you submit.

When I'm writing a story, I'm always changing font, font size and font colour - it's the same thing, makes the text look different. I find errors jump off the page - I can scan quickly, don't need to read every word.

This.

At the very least, make a significant change to the font so the words are in very different positions during the first and or final read. Mine is a sans serif font about double the size I write in. What's making those errors jump out at you in the preview screen is the words not being where you're used to them being. You're seeing what's actually there instead of what you expect. If you do that before heading to the submission wizard, you can save yourself a lot of load time and potential for server hiccups losing things.

 

[SkyBubble]

My stories are written and edited in Word, then copy-and-pasted to Lit. I find it helps with final edits (‘final’ is kind of floppy as I often do three or more) if I can see what my readers will see.

Yes. mine also.