Seven Degrees Left of Center

The Art of Rereading

Rereading your own writing is strange.

Most writers talk about wanting to read their work the way a stranger would, with fresh eyes and no memory of how it was made. Because of my brain damage, I sometimes get exactly that.

I reread my own pages and genuinely think, What was I thinking?

Not as criticism. Literally.

The intention is gone. The struggle is gone. What’s left is the sentence on the page, sitting there like it belongs to someone else. In those moments, I get something close to a first-reader experience.

It’s disorienting.
It’s also kind of fascinating.

Sometimes I’m confused by my own choices. Sometimes I laugh at a line I don’t remember writing. Occasionally, I surprise myself.

The editor brain still shows up. Coffee helps. But every so often, the story unfolds without commentary, and I get to follow it instead of fix it.

Rereading has become less about control and more about discovery. Not just of the story, but of the person who wrote it.

And that, oddly enough, makes the reread worth doing.