As a born-and-raised Angeleno, I’ve logged more hours in traffic than some people have logged at their jobs. The kind where you’re not moving, the AC is struggling, and you start having deep philosophical conversations with yourself about whether you actually need to get to your destination.
But here’s the thing about traffic jams that most people miss: sometimes you’re the one accidentally blocking the intersection, and sometimes you’re the one laying on the horn at the person blocking it. On any given day, you fluidly swap between those two roles.
That, right there, is the emotional truth of editing your own writing.
The objectivity problem
It’s easy to spot another driver’s mistakes. Infuriatingly easy. But when you’re the one stopped in the middle of the intersection, you don’t regard yourself with the same righteous clarity. You have reasons. You have context. You were almost through.
Writing is the same. You can dissect someone else’s awkward sentence from across the room, but your own? The ones you birthed through effort and intention? They get a pass they don’t deserve, because you know what you meant.
Your reader doesn’t know what you meant. Your reader only has what you wrote.
Enter: The Traffic Light Revision Technique
This is a method for looking at your own draft with the cold, merciful eyes of an editor who doesn’t love you. I call it the TLRT for short, and it works like this.
After you finish a draft, rough or final, open it in a word processor that lets you highlight text in color. Then follow these five steps.
Step 1: Make a copy
Save a new version with “TLRT1” in the filename. This is your marked-up copy. The original stays pristine.
Step 2: Color every sentence
Read each sentence and highlight it:
- Green, This sentence is the best it can be.
- Yellow, Minor modifications would strengthen this.
- Red, Revise completely or cut it.
Don’t change anything yet. Just assess. This is the diagnosis, not the surgery.
Step 3: Make another copy
Save this version as “TLRT2.” This is your editing document. You keep TLRT1 as a reference, over time, your color patterns will reveal your habits, your strengths, and the sentence types you consistently get wrong. It’s a mirror you didn’t know you needed.
Step 4: Edit the yellow and red
Focus your energy where the draft is weakest. Turn yellow and red into green. You may need to adjust some green sentences to accommodate changes, but don’t waste time re-reviewing text you already trust.
Step 5: Read from the beginning
When every sentence is green, read the whole thing from the top without making edits. If something still catches, mark it yellow or red, take a break, and return later.
When you’re uncertain about a sentence, ask: “Does this clearly communicate my true intent and give my reader a cohesive experience?”
If the answer isn’t an immediate yes, the sentence has more work to do.
The earned challenge
The Traffic Light Revision Technique won’t make you a better driver. But it will make you a better editor of your own work, and that distinction, more than any other single skill, separates writers who get hired from writers who don’t.
Run your last published piece through the TLRT. I suspect you’ll discover more yellow than you expected.
That’s not discouraging. That’s awareness. And awareness is where better begins.