A Short Guide to Editing Yourself
What should you know before self-editing? I have some ideas for you.
In less than a week, I’ll send in my dissertation and call it a day on this phase of my master’s. By the time you read this letter, I’d have completed a second obsessive round of rereading, rewriting, and editing the story I’ve come to love. Over the past few months, I’ve written 500 words a day of this project. In an ideal world, that’s the end - I’ll write this story, reach the word limit and submit it right away or ship it off to a professional to fix all my errors, eliminating myself from the ordeal [extra effort] of going back to rewrite and correct myself.
Unfortunately, it’s not an ideal world, so I have to spend the extra time crossing my i’s and dotting my t’s before sending my work to a professional who’ll give it a different eye. That’s a simplistic way of describing self-editing, but it’s a start.
Self-editing is everything you do to iterate on your work, with a goal to transforming its quality (writing is only a quarter of the process - rewriting, self-editing, and editing takes a huge chunk.) It’s easily (or weirdly) comparable to improving yourself; we sometimes know parts of us that are problematic, toxic, or self-sabotaging -- even without feedback [or outrage] from our friends. We know that we can be annoying or rude or petty, or clingy. Self-editing is trusting yourself to do the work of filtering out traits that you’re not proud of, assuming you’re self-aware or can put a mirror up to your face and audit yourself. It’s a painful process, and that’s why I’m sharing what I’m learning from doing it repeatedly.
You’ll find it helpful if you do any writing. It’s by no means an exhaustive list:
Give the work breathing space - sleep, binge-watch ‘Big Brother,’ rewatch ‘Modern Family,’ etc.
If it doesn’t feel right, it’ll probably never feel right — it’s okay to trust your gut.
Don’t assume that your reader [the audience] won’t be smart enough to notice the problem. Believe that they’re more intelligent than you and are ready to tear you apart.
Know what you’re looking out for — you have to be deliberate in rereading your work; run through it with a red pen. Questions to ask: Clarity: is this straightforward and unlikely to confuse? Consistency: is the tone the same all through? Central idea: is the idea coming through? Structure: do the ideas flow organically from section to section, paragraph to paragraph, sentence to sentence, and word to word? A few issues to catch: passive sentences, crutch words, tired words, poor grammar, bad punctuation, clichés, adjectives, “really” and “very,” uncertain terms that water down my work: (“I think” “I believe”), etc.
Also, watch out for sentences and paragraphs that start the same way; they’re your enemy.
Don’t over-edit -- know when to stop.
Do the read-aloud test. Sometimes it looks right but doesn’t read right.
It might be pretty, but if it’s not doing the work, ax it; AKA kill your darlings -- typically, you want every sentence or word to work for you. Don’t use a word just because you want to fill up space.
You won’t catch all the errors - how ironic. Because you’ve become too close to the writing, you’re likely to miss out on a few (or a lot of) apparent errors. Forgive yourself.
Things I found interesting this week:
Invisible Women and the entire “I Like Girls” podcast - must listen
Speaking of podcasts, I shared this one in my first letter to you this month. I’m resharing it because I don’t know who else is willing to listen to me gush about it. I’m deeply fascinated by the kind of storytelling in The Turning: The Sisters Who Left
Be good. Read, share, leave comments, etc. Until next time, friend. ❤️
Why did you stopped writing?