Editting: Fine tuning your craft.

So, you have your piece all written out, from start to finish. The plot has its beginning, a middle, and an end, and you are more than satisfied with it. Time to post it to the web, or send it off to this publisher or that one. Right?

Oh, if only it were so.

See, if you write for yourself, and have no inclination to show your work to people, I guess this would be ok. But if you want your work to be the best it can, and especially if you want to publish it, you are not done. In fact, maybe closer to half. I can tell already I have lost some of you already, those who had prayed to leave editing in the high school English class in which it no doubt belongs. If I weren't writing this article myself, I might well join you. Still, editing and revision have their place, and can take your writing from good to great if you just take some time to get it done.

So, the process is simple. Once you finish writing, stop. Go away from your piece from a while, see a movie, do something, just so long as it is not writing. You are going to want a fresh start on this when you come back. In fact, this step is probably the most important to good editing. If you are burned out by too many words when you edit and revise, you will probably end up doing a pretty  sloppy job of it. The next step is almost as important. Set a date to return to writing, and stick to that date. If you let it slip by, that sets a precedent for habitual procrastination with editing, and you'll never get it done in any sort of timely manner.

From there, its just a matter of rereading, correcting mistakes, and adding content and details as needed. Want to add a bit of description here? Does this bit of dialogue make no sense? Now is the time to correct mistakes like this. No matter who you are, there are mistakes to be found, I promise you. However, here is the problem many people have with editing, myself especially. As you might expect of any process involving fully reading and reworking a novel length story, this takes forever, and becomes very tedious very quickly.

Really, the only way to get it done is to set a schedule, and stick to it. You will edit on these days, for this amount of time. Do not set a specific amount of material you want to edit, or you’ll set yourself up for defeat. Just stick to the times, and get it done. You may find it dull like me, but you will be making your work as good as it can be.

To me, that is worth it. So I keep at it, and stick to my schedule. I am finally nearing the end of a full edit and revision of one of my best pieces, in preparation for self publishing it. I know that even if I want to spoon out my eyes after all this rereading, my writing is worth it.

This is JJ signing off this time, and hoping sincerely you have a better time editing than I do. XD