The one thing about writing that trips me up: Tenses

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Several posts in this site were written for the pre-AI world. While some ideas may be outdated, the fundamental philosophy remains. Feel free to leave a comment if you’d like to discuss how I think about it now.

In your profession, have you spent years getting good at something, but always trip over that one little mole?

For me, that’s tenses. I’m a pretty decent writer. On most days, I do okay. But every single day, I get my tenses messed up. I start a sentence in past tense, and by the time I’m at the end, I’ve done a somersault around future and come back to present. To say nothing of present continuous, past perfect, future perfect continuous etc.

In theory, I know how they work. In practice, though, I mostly go by instinct. And that instinct can be a bit of a brain-fucker.

What’s your little trip up?

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