I meant to call this “Editing: the Big Slog, because that’s what it feels like, a slow, laborious slog up a steep mountain grade. However, there’s no question that you can improve your writing through editing: you just need to tackle the task with energy and a lack of ego.
Why is Editing so Important?
Too many people have told me over the years that the key to writing success is the process of rewriting, as I mention in this post. Especially during National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, I spend about three to four hours a day writing the first rough draft of a novel. Assuming about two thousand words a day, and a draft of seventy-six thousand worlds, that’s about thirty eight days, or about a hundred ten hours of writing. I’ll easily spend four times that amount in editing, rewriting and coffee purchases along the way. What’s fascinating to me is to see the number of absolutely idiotic mistakes I’ve made in the rough draft, which I catch by editing perhaps on the second, third, or fourth edit. The fact is, without taking the time to go over the work page by page, line by line, I would never have caught these errors. And as nice as my novel might have been in the rough stages, it is nowhere near ready for publication. Praise for people who edit for a living: I could never do that.
Benefits of Careful Self-editing
Taking the time to be critical about one’s work isn’t easy. After all, it’s our creation, so we want to savor it and value what we’ve written. I agree: creating something that no one else has created before, no matter how similar it may be to their work, is wonderful, but it can always be better. This article from Writermag.com on self-editing gives several tips on being brutal with your work to improve it. I agree with most of their suggestions, especially the idea of preferring active versus passive voice. I thought that was a bothersome suggestion when I got it from ProWriting Aid (too many times, actually). But when I’ve read the before and after, and changed several passages or actions from active to passive, the power of that change came through. Appropriately chastised.
Another benefit—and this may seem counterintuitive—is when I realize that a passage I’ve written is actually good; but I don’t remember writing it. Say what? Yep. There are several times in my novels where I’ve read through a passage that really works in terms of dialogue, setting or narrative, and I don’t remember making a conscious decision to write it. What happened is my creative mind took over and produced something that borders on “literary.” Those are the times when I really think I’m a writer.
Careful editing can improve your writing, make it worthy of publication, and make you proud. And while putting aside your ego to tackle a work isn’t easy, it’s worth it in the end.
