One thing I’ve been struggling with a lot lately that I know to be true - the more of your writing you throw away, the better the final product will be. I generally push back against “common web standard readability” in that sense - I don’t think one should necessarily write for the reader absolutely, like some academic material might suggest - but I am personally undergoing a big change toward usability of my written work, if that makes sense. Simply being willing to discard large portions of work completely - not set aside, but discarded - that is one of the things I’m trying to work on right now.
If I’ve learned anything about others’ writing in my adult life, it’s that they (you) should not be afraid. I’ve been privileged in having the opposite problem, in many ways, but I promise - nobody is going to read what you write unless you really really want them to and put significant effort into getting in front of their faces. (And even then it’s not necessarily likely they will.) So please for gourd’s sake do not be afraid to put whatever you need down, especially in the privacy of your own text editor.
As an editor, I’m a little rusty, but I’d be glad to look over anything and make suggestions. What I cannot/will not do is quantify an abstract of potential value or make hardcore corrections - those are valuable but more suited to working professional editors imo.
Thanks for starting this thread and otherwise chatting dzwdz! :)