Congratulate yourself for your first draft. Then get back to work.
After two or three hours of solid work, I saved the first draft of a full page ad for the magazine I produce.
The project had taken a lot of thought, then even more trial and error to make the text and photos fit. I took some satisfaction in having gotten this far. Then I printed the page and took it upstairs.
A half hour later, with fresher eyes, I reviewed my first draft.
Ouch! How could I have missed that the main block of text was so hard to read?
My second draft corrected that problem. Again I saved and printed the page.
At first glance, the second draft looked good. A second glance revealed some minor problems: the text box around one photo was a different width. And I’d left too much space between a photo and a caption.
I saved what I thought was my third and final draft. Until today, four days later, when I again reviewed the printout. The headline’s color popped, but was just too garish. I found its replacement in the bright blue of a photo at the bottom of the page.
Sometimes the answer stares you in the face. You just have to revise enough drafts so you can see it.
