Regret Writing
Richard Skaare
I wrote an angry email to my oldest late one night that broke my 12-hour rule. I was right in the reprimand but wrong in the tone of the message.
My 12-hour Rule
1
After writing passionately ...
hit the Save and then Shut Down buttons on your computer, not the Send button.
2
After waking the next morning ...
read what you wrote – grimace and groan — and you will know how the recipient would have understood it had you sent it.
3
After rethinking ...
what you really meant to say and how to say it, rewrite, and press Send –or Delete and get on with your life.
For the untested wordsmith, writing that stirs passion appears so powerful, poetic, and personal at 1:00 a.m. It’s amazing how good your writing skills seem to be and how good your soul feels! That’s exhilarating.
Why then are such wonderful sounding words so wrong? Because a late-night polemic typically has:
-
- Too many words.
We overwrite because the governor switch for carefully crafted, creative writing doesn’t work for most of us after 10:00 p.m. - Too many adjectives and adverbs.
It would have been better if, instead of typing, we had read some Toni Morrison or Ernest Hemingway to purge ourselves of embellished writing. - Too much of you.
You’re alone, tired, perhaps a bit sad and/or angry; it’s dark, the cheeriness of morning is many hours away; and the only person there is you; so, it’s all about you. - Too few facts.
Your claims are unsupported by anything but piss and vinegar. - Too thin on precision.
You’re too worked up to pull out your thesaurus for the right word.
Sorry for being harsh, but hardly anyone besides yourself cares much about your unbridled, personal diatribe. Selfish as it sounds, the recipient of your prose simply needs to know your main point. What you don’t want to do is to write a late-night, first draft to a person whose misinterpretation – or correct interpretation – could produce deleterious results. In short, regret for both of you.
- Too many words.
Options
Wake your partner...
and ask him or her to read what you wrote. His or her emotional reaction before and/or after reading will give your writing a face.
Next day ...
summarize the previous night’s vitriol into an introductory sentence followed by three brief points that convey content sans emotion.
Print and fold ...
your original writing into your personal journal. When you read it several years from now, you may be impressed by the raw honesty of your message but, more importantly, you’re likely to understand the tumult in your life at that time that caused it.
Oh yeah, did I send off my angry email? Yes, I did. And the heartfelt recovery email I wrote the next day created the desired effect. Lesson learned yet again.
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