Image Credits: Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay images. Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes
I don’t know if any survey has been done but, from talking with writers I know and reading interviews over many years, editing elicits a Marmite response. You love it or hate it. There doesn’t appear to be a middle “don’t mind it” option!
My attitude towards editing took a major step for the better on realising good edits were increasing my receiving acceptances. My attitude has gone up further in leaps and bounds since becoming an editor too.
It was a joy to run a two part course at The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick recently on this topic. It was useful being able to approach this from the viewpoint of an author and a competition judge. I am both and glad to say I will be back to competition judging again soon.
But can I understand why some dislike editing? Oh yes.
The obvious fun side to creative writing is in inventing your characters and their situations and getting their stories down. Job done, right?
Hmm… no. You’ve just begun. I think that’s what can cause some writers to dislike editing. The creative spark is fun. Editing seems like hard work and it can be, and in many ways should be, but it helps no end though if you can see editing as a separate creative task and it is, honestly. Why? Because there is a creative element to improving your work. Why wouldn’t you want to do that and make your piece the best it can be?
Seeing Editing as an Essential Part of the Overall Creative Process
Having this attitude towards editing helps a lot, I’ve found. It takes the fear away. It takes away the thought “oh I suppose I had better edit then”. Having a more positive attitude in seeing it as improving your story and its chances out in the big bad world means it is easier to get on and edit because you know what you are about to do here will strength your tale.
This attitude also helps because you accept deep down you don’t get your story right first go. It helps even more on realising no writer does. What you do get down on that first draft is something useful to work on. You cannot edit an empty page.
This applies to non-fiction too. You won’t be seeing the first draft of this article. The only one who sees my first drafts is me! But I’ve found this frees me up. I just write, knowing it will be improved later, so I do just write. I’m not worrying at this stage about having to get this sentence or paragraph spot on before moving on to the next.
I’ve long reached the conclusion there is no such thing as the perfect sentence or paragraph anyway. What you aim to do over time is to get better at knowing what works for you and your writing and focusing on what helps you to get your pieces written.
Avoiding Time Pressure
This is vital. Do give yourself enough time to edit. Don’t rush it. You will miss something. I know I did earlier in my career and a story I had high hopes of (with good reason) for a competition failed miserably because I only spotted two glaring errors after I’d sent it in. I’ve not made that mistake again.
I take a couple of weeks off any official deadline and use that as my last chance to polish my piece and submit it, still with plenty of time to spare. What I do here is write in my diary when I need to have my first draft down by. I “book in” time to rest that story. (Meantime I start to draft another tale. I like to have one “on the go”, one “resting”, and ideas to follow up on so I know I will still have something to write up later).
Once the story is rested, and often this is a matter of a few days only (novelists need much longer), I then have another look at the tale and then and only then can I see what needs fixing. There will be something that needs fixing but far from depressing me, it tells me I’ve spotted what is good, I can remove anything which won’t help my piece, and all writers need to fix something about their drafts, even if it just to correct a type typo which somehow slipped the net.
Word of warning there by the way – aids are enormously helpful for detecting errors but what they can’t do (so far) is pick up on context. So you can have a beautifully spelled word which is wrong for your story. Some of my editorial work does deal with picking up on things like that. It happens more often than you might think and auto correct is sometimes a curse, not a blessing. In some ways I should be pleased about that – human input is so necessary to creativity, as it should be.
Having the time away from a piece helps me because I need to get out of the mindset of creativity (which is where you’re at when writing that first draft) and into the cool brain of being able to assess what works and what doesn’t.
Time away from a piece is the only sure way I know to give myself enough distance from what I’ve written. I almost have to see my pieces (and this goes for this post too) almost as if someone else has written it and ask myself what do I make of this, what works, what needs strengthening etc.
Is there anything I could add which would be useful to a reader for a post like this one? For fiction, what would the reader enjoy? Do they need this bit of information to make full sense of the story? When there is repetition, am I doing this for effect or is it a mistake?
Being able to ask yourself questions like that as you go through your work puts your mind into that cool analytical stage you need to be able to assess something properly.
Useful Tips
If editing on screen, it can help to change font, font size, colour of text etc to make your document seem different. There is something about being different here which makes errors easier to spot. You wouldn’t send your work out in this style so you do have to go through it and make sure all is in order before submitting it in the house style required. It is on that going through everything you will spot the mistakes.
Also reading your work out loud (and recording it on Zoom and playing it back) is a great way of spotting errors. If it doesn’t read out loud well, your readers will struggle with it. Time to get the editing pen out again then. I especially find this useful for ensuring my dialogue works.
I don’t know why it is but you do spot more errors on paper than on screen. I think your mind must fill in words when you look at something on screen, which is why doing anything to make the document look different (i.e. appears new to you) will help you spot things.
Listening to a play back of your story also helps you take in the tale as a reader would when they read internally. That can show you what a reader might make of your character and situation. This can be enlightening. I’ve found it has helped me spot where I’ve left something out which a reader would need to know to make sense of the tale. I, of course, know this information. I’ve just forgotten to include it for the reader precisely because I do know it subconsciously. So hearing the story will remind me to put that information in. I can’t expect a reader to guess here.
Also set yourself a date by which you’ll submit your story. It means you can’t edit for ever and ever, amen. It gives you something to work towards. And you get your story out there!
Conclusion
I can’t edit as I go. Some writers can. You need to figure out what way works best for you but I recommend draft down first, rest it, then have another look. To me this is a simple and sensible process.
Having said this, there is nothing so satisfying as having carried out all the work you need to do on a piece, knowing all is as good as you can make it, and then hitting the submit button. Well, unless it is receiving the email back saying you’ve been placed in a competition or a story of yours will be making it into an anthology, of course!
But it is the creativity and good editing which makes it more likely for you to get those emails.
Put like that, editing isn’t so bad after all, is it?
Related Posts:-
Read interviews with Chandler’s Ford writer Allison Symes: Part 1 and Part 2.
Read blog posts by Allison Symes published on Chandler’s Ford Today.
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