A classic case of less being more

In Willkie Collins’ quite won­der­ful Vic­to­ri­an nov­el, The Moon­stone, (T. S. Eliot said it was the first and best detec­tive nov­el) there is a character—the head servant—Gabriel Bet­teredge, who, when per­plexed by a prob­lem, opens up his ragged copy of Robin­son Cru­soe and arbi­trar­i­ly selects a pas­sage which tells him what to do. This is a vari­ant of those who use the Bible in just the same fash­ion. I sup­pose one might do so for any great work of lit­er­a­ture, Ham­let, Don Quixote, or War and Peace. 

It’s also a good way to revise your own work.

Say you’ve writ­ten a nov­el, and you are still in the process of revis­ing it. Hav­ing read your own work hun­dreds of time, it’s some­times hard to focus on the par­tic­u­lar. Your eyes just gal­lop over the text. You know it so well you are not real­ly read­ing it.

Try doing what Gabriel Bet­teredge did: Open your work at ran­dom, and read your work arbi­trar­i­ly, a para­graph, here, a para­graph there. You will be sharply focused, and you will see your writ­ing out of con­text, which can actu­al­ly be quite helpful.

It’s a clas­sic case of less being more: The less you read, the more sharply you will see what you have written.