Too Familiar

Posted October 8th, 2009

I've been working on rewriting my Cocoa Book for The Pragmatic Bookshelf and my editor is finding two errors that I consistently make because I am too familiar with the material. These remind me of Type I and Type II errors from statistics. 

In stats a Type I error happens when you reject the null hypothesis even though it was true. A Type II error happens in the other direction: you accept the null hypothesis even though it was false. As an aside,  figuring out the probability of a Type I error is easier than figuring out that of a Type II since we know which curve we are looking at.

In writing I find that the problem is the difference between what is in my head and what is on the page. In a Type I writing error I have said the same thing more than once. When I read the second instance of it, it looks familiar but I think that that's just because I've read this part before and not because I've read the contents of the part somewhere else. Although this is annoying to the reader, it is not particularly confusing.

A Type II error occurs when what is in my head doesn't make it to the page. I refer to something that I've covered before even though I haven't actually written it down–I've just thought about it. This is both annoying and confusing to the reader.

These and other problems I'm having with revising this book have to do with approaching my material with the fresh eyes of a reader who is new to it. That is my current struggle both as an author and as an editor. There are books I've edited where we've revised the material so many times and it has come so far that I'm looking at the content relative to where it started instead of in relation to where it needs to end up.

I'd love suggestions on how you "keep it fresh" in your daily work.

This post originally appeared in the Pragmatic Life blog.