The Squint

Painters seeking the proper light and dark tones in their works sometimes employ a powerful, affordable tool that is built right into the human skull. It’s called The Squint, and it requires you to stand aback from the work in progress and, well, squint. Why all the blurring? Because doing so lets you see if you’ve captured the basic structure of the thing you’r painting without all the distraction of surface textures and other superficialities. The same tool works very well on monthlong novels. Remember to use a mental squint as you write, creating in broad strokes without getting sucked into the creative standstill of fretting over the fine print. All the masterly details can be filled in later, once you better understand the arc of your story.