Preventing Brain Fade

By Johnny D. Boggs

             Brain Fade.

My favorite bit of sports jargon/slang comes from my newspaper days. If you include college, part-time work, freelancing and almost 15 years in what was then a highly competitive/drive-you-to-drink market in Dallas-Fort Worth, that covers 1980-2001. The phrase comes from NASCAR – stock-car racing – which I found myself covering and editing during much of my career. You see, when Dallas Times Herald and Fort Worth Star-Telegram editors learned I came from South Carolina, they figured I knew all about goin’ racin’. Well, I did attend school with NASCAR Hall-of-Famer Cale Yarborough’s daughters.

             Covering races or editing articles about races, I ran across Brain Fade a time or two.

There’s not much a driver can do at 190 mph when his car throws rod or a tire blows, but when a driver does something completely stupid – and maybe wrecks other cars – that, folks, is Brain Fade.

So whenever an editor or proofreader (yikes, or even a reader after a book/article is published) calls my attention to a stupid mistake, I chalk it up to Brain Fade.

Most Brain Fades I attribute to newspaper training: Write fast. File on time. Pray that the copy editors catch anything that will get you in serious trouble. Make it better for the next edition.

Sure, when I sit down at the desk, I think: This book isn’t due for months, take your time, don’t type so fast. I remind myself of the advice a high school writing teacher gave Robert A. Caro, who went on to have a successful newspaper career before becoming a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer:

“The trouble with you is that you think with your fingers.”

For a few minutes, I slow down. Then that newspaper DNA takes over and I’m back at 120 words a minute.

My goal always is: Cut down on Brain Fades.

In Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing, Caro recalls that when he moved to book-length works he started writing his first drafts with pencil in longhand – just to slow that write-fast instinct. “It doesn’t hurt,” he says, “but you get calluses.” My handwriting, however, stinks.

One night on the sports desk at the Dallas Times Herald, a fellow copy editor theorized on why we caught more gaffes on paper proofs than while editing on computers. His reasoning: The eye-to-brain connection rebels from a computer screen. So print your proof out on paper. And recycle so we don’t kill as many trees.

Another tip I’ve heard: Read your work aloud. (But I hate my voice.)

Or change your point size and your font before proofreading.

Hey, we’ll try anything.

Benjamin Dreyer, copy chief of Random House, had an interesting essay in the September 25 New York Times Book Review. One line, as writer and editor, especially struck a chord:

“I still aim for unadulterated perfection, at least as far as books are concerned. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t.”

I’ll keep on trying.