You have come up with a great idea and you managed to translate it into words? You are surely happy with the result of your work, but now comes the really tough part – editing it. Talented writers have creative minds and they rarely have a problem creating a captivating story, but the editing process isn’t fun and it limits their creativity. That’s why many of them simply avoid this step, but that is the worst thing you could do because you wouldn’t end up providing your reader with the best possible piece to read.
Why is it difficult to edit your own writing?
There are many reasons that make editing your own work a challenging task. First of all, it is your personal form of artistic expression and it is often painful to do the cutting, redrafting and revising. Another thing is that every single word you’ve written is too close to you. You crafted those sentences and it’s only natural for them to make sense to you. You know what you wanted to say and you understand the flow just perfectly. It is more than difficult for you to spot the gaps and repetitive phrases.
After all, you are a human and you make mistakes. Our eyes can play tricks on us, and even the most obvious typos can get by when you spend so much time on your writing.
Yes, self-editing is a hard thing to do, but it is also necessary and you can’t publish the piece if you don’t review the text. Not every writer has a professional editor that stands behind them and cleans up the mess, but you should send a cleaner copy even if you do have an editor. The ability of self-editing your work will make the difference between being an average talent and a great writer.
How to edit your own writing
The first and most important thing to remember is to write first. Don’t do the editing while you’re in the middle of a creative flow, because you would never finish a piece that way. Just get it all out before you come back to it to fix it, after the story is finished.
It is always wise to start the editing process with a spell check. This is a very helpful tool, although you shouldn’t rely completely on it because it does play some tricks on you. Run the spelling and grammar checker before you start with the real editing, but be careful and don’t use it mechanically.
Now that the most important phase (writing the piece) is done, you should step away from the work for a while. Go have a coffee with your friends, or a long walk in the park. The best thing you could do is to let the piece rest at least overnight before you come back to it with an editing eye.
If you print out your story, you will be able to catch more errors when compared to reading it on your computer screen. This is why it is important to change the format of the piece in order to edit it better. If you don’t want to print it, you can read it in ‘preview’ mode, which will still change your point of view and allow you to spot the errors more easily.
Here is another effective tip that will make your self-editing process easier: take the printed piece to read it in a place other than your working environment. Changing the location can make a real difference!
Before you start making important changes, you have to read the piece all the way through, in order to think of it as a whole. Reading the aloud can also help you notice the parts and sentences that don’t make sense. If you find yourself justifying a sentence and reading it more than once before it sounds clear, you need to change it.
After reading everything, it will be easier for you to consider the big picture and identify the sections that need to be removed, or missing pieces that need to be added. The editing process should not start with polishing every single word and sentence. Macro editing always comes first, so you should first take care of the big things and then move onto the details. When it comes to the micro editing process, it should start only after you are completely satisfied with the big picture. Cut on the word count and remove every unnecessary word. The micro editing process means considering each word and every sentence. Use active voice whenever possible, and make sure your sentence constructions are clear.
This is very important: when you go though the whole piece, it doesn’t mean that the editing is done. You need to reread the piece once again, because sometimes you can make mistakes while editing too. Run another spell check to round things up, as this simple step can save you lots of frustration in the end.
Conclusion: Self-editing is necessary
It’s definitely not easy to self-edit your own writing, but it is more than necessary if you want to deliver a polished piece that will capture many readers. Even if you have a professional editor to take care of this process, you should still go through the piece yourself because otherwise you would provide them with unclear work and the only way to edit some parts of it would be to change your voice. That is not something you would want to happen, so if you want the piece to look exactly as you hoped for – you need to learn how to edit your own writing.
Sandra Miller is freelance short story author and graduate of Literature from the NYU, where she wrote for the students journal and tutored students in writing. She recommends authors use professional editing services Help.Plagtracker.(click to get more details) Now she is writing her first YA novel.
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Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog 
and thank you, Sandra, I didn’t mean to leave you out. I failed to edit my comment before posting.
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Thank you, Apeman, for posting this important subject ~
Self-editing is only step one of the editing process. It’s the calm before the rewrite (I mean the first of several rewrites)
I would recommend longer than overnight before self-editing. The longer the better. It’s always a temptation to keep checking to see if that seedling has grown, but digging around delays the goal.
Know your book is in there. Planted, and in need of incubating. more importantly, your eyes need to have time to reset themselves to a ‘cold read.’
Then hand it to a beta reader or readers, and only then, pass it to a professional editor. While you’re waiting, allow your skin to toughen (preferably in the sun or at least some real weather) because after that, another rewrite (or three) is usually in the offing.
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Always … you are a great help to us writers. I don’t know about other writers, but I’d rather be skinned alive then have to edit my stuff. Writing is fun and therapeutic … editing is torture. Thanks for the help.
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LOL 🙂
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Contrary to what most writers seem to feel, I love the editing process! It gives me a chance to reread what I’ve written, because I always love my own stories. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t write them. I’m sensitive to grammar, punctuation, paragraph and sentence construction, diction, and that sort of thing because I was academically trained. The thing that’s hard for me is cutting the length – deciding what is extraneous. That’s one reason I self-publish – I don’t want somebody chopping my book up and making it into something I didn’t intend. Nobody else understands what I want to say as well as I do. I may never sell a million books, but I don’t care!
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It’s a decided advantage to love the stories you’ve written yourself Lorinda. You are one of only three authors I know (so far) who feel confident enough to do their own editing and all three of you turn out exceptional works 🙂
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Well, thanks for the kind words, Mr. Ape! I’ve read about some authors, particularly those who write just to make money, who hate their own books. That must turn writing into torture! What I don’t enjoy doing is editing someone else’s book. It’s difficult to say what’s wrong in a tactful way that won’t hurt people’s feelings or make them angry.
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I know what you mean Lorinda, I’ve done basic corrections on translated works for European Authors and the translators used a dictionary or similar, but had no feel for the stories, so when the authors saw all my highlighted corrections, they were upset and angry – not really with me, but with the expensive translators.
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Reblogged this on The Pelican Writer and commented:
Great advice on editing.
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Oh yes! I stand solidly behind this. Edit, edit, edit and edit again. The more professional your work, the more likely people are to read it. Also, if you have a friend who is particularly good at English, ask them to beta-read it for you. It helps to have someone else spot those pesky little typo weeds. If you also have an editor, it will make their job easier, and you will appear more professional to them. After all, they aren’t there to re-write your masterpiece for you.
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Reminds me a little of the advice I would always give my students regarding their creative writing. This was an interesting read, thank you.
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I agree that self-editing is important, so when you hand your copy to your editor you’ve already got it as good as you can at this first stage. Also, when I publish short stories and flash fiction on my blog, I self-edit those. I already use a similar process to the one above – all good tips!
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No matter how much tips and whatnot there are, it is impossible to edit your own work for the simple reason our brain will see the words our mind has come up with and not what is actually there.
To say it is possible to self-edit is giving those indie authors that really need an editor (a real one and not someone who has a degree in English and therefor thinks they can edit prose) the false illusion that they can actually put great work out without any quality check whatsoever, because they have followed all the tips and walked the walk, therefor their work is now flawless.
I really dislike articles like this, because it is simply not true, you cannot self-edit!
I’ll get off my soapbox and write a rant on this topic to put up on my own blog.
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LOL, at least you brought your own soapbox and didn’t borrow mine (wherever it’s got to) I’ll reblog it as a counterargument Lucy 🙂
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I’m still to write it though 🙂 Today I have a grammar piece for those who love their adverbs.
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GSNARFFT, anything to do with the technicalities of any language makes my lips pucker Lucy 🙂
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Hahaha, I have a great rant on the grammarnazis, of which I am not one. :-p
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Reblogged this on Have We Had Help? and commented:
More on editing…
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