Posthuman Blues

I can't stop browsing my book now that it's actually bound and portable. Fortunately, I'm finding moments of poor phrasing and dumb word-choice which, in theory, can be corrected before the finalized edition is shipped. I basically have to force myself to put it aside for fear of finding yet more to correct; it's easy to get carried away. After all, this book is going to represent me to (hopefully) many thousands of readers. The last thing I need is to come across as needlessly verbose, pretentious or repetitive.

Then again, I think I'm my toughest critic. I'm positively anal-retentive when it comes to reading my own stuff, this blog included. Sometimes I get the overwhelming urge to alter posts for increased readability, but I typically desist because it seems somehow unethical, a bit like Winston Smith creating "unpersons" at the Ministry of Truth.

Incidentally, this post is a virtual clone of a recent confessional by John Shirley, who's going through a similar case of revision fever as the review copy of his Gurdjieff biography makes the rounds.