It’s frustrating to be stuck on a sentence while editing. It’s as if everything else is fine except this one sentence that needs to be changed. Even when we rewrite it, it still doesn’t sound right. Maybe it’s the choice of words. Maybe it doesn’t flow from the previous sentence. Or maybe it just doesn’t fit in the paragraph.
Being stuck on a sentence can disrupt the momentum of the editing process. It can bog us down, drain our concentration and focus. If we get stuck for too long, we can lose motivation to edit the rest of the piece. It was as if this one thing–as small and minor as it seemed–kept us from finishing a work we had spent hours on.
Whenever I get stuck on a sentence, I’ll try to fix it for awhile, and if I’m still not satisfied with the corrections, I’ll move on to the next sentence. When I come back to editing the part that I was stuck at, the solution will come to me right away as if all it needed was for me to step away.
Fallton Havenstonne 