My last act with a piece of writing is to read it sentence by sentence, or even clause by clause, closing my eyes to parse each word with my mind’s eye. It’s amazing what this process throws up. It is also a way of saying goodbye to your piece, sending it out into the world fully prepared, or as prepared as you can make it because nothing is ever fully prepared, you are never fully in control, not when it comes to the figaries of the human imagination. This uncertainty is something you have to learn to live with.
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Like sending a child out into the world
That’s a good comparison.
I had to look up figaries! not often I find a word I have to look up. My husband reads it out loud to me. that does much the same.
I think to have someone else read it out is even better – there’s a useful distance created and there is always the danger you will read what should be there rather than what is actually on the paper.
For everyone else, a definition of figaries”…a fanciful mood; whimsical ideas or notions; am impulsive decision…” from A Dictionary of Hiberno-English