There's No Such Thing as Writing, There's only Re-writing

You can do better! Yes, I'm talking to YOU! You're a writer, right? Even if you've yet to start plucking out your book, if you blog, write a newsletter, even pen long emails, you are a writer. 

As such, you owe it to yourself...and your audience to crank out your very best. The best way to ensure that you do this is by editing.  

You might not need to read this, but I'll bet you a hundred rupees that some of your writer friends do. Am I right? As people who communicate via the written word, it behooves us to get as happy about editing and re-writing as we do about writing.  

As an editor and writing coach, I regularly canoodle with writers and aspiring authors. Come close, let me tell you about one of the struggles that a lot of emerging writers have: they hate to edit their work. Well, that might be a bit harsh. In any event, they tend to neglect self-editing. Too many writers simply do not give proper time and attention to editing their work. 

Two professors of mine-—one in college, the other in law school—bellowed to the class, "There's no such thing as writing, there's only re-writing!" 

Over the years, I discovered this to be true. Good writing requires a massive amount of rewriting. 

Think of your first draft as vomit. What do you do after you vomit? You clean that mess up, right? 

Don't be lazy, clean up your renderings. Note to the wannabe author, the less you edit, the more your editing cost. Ask my clients, they'll tell you. 

I'm an editor with nearly fifteen years in the business, and I edit, edit, and edit some more. And guess what, after I've pushed "send" I still find typos in my newsletter. Ugh! But I'll tell you this, I've put in hours of writing, editing and re-writing so I forgive myself. After all, I'm human. Our readers will tolerate a typo here and there. But a post riddled with errors will cause your reader to distrust the content. 

How to Self-Edit Like a Boss:

• ​Vomit - Let the idea percolate. When you get to the pad or computer, ​let it emerge fully onto the page. Resist any temptation to interrupt the flow by going back and editing. Once you have your first draft, now go back and start the editing and re-writing journey. 

• Clean It Up - Remember, vomit is messy and smelly. It needs to be cleaned up. Now go back and read what you've written. Does it say precisely what you're wanting to communicate? Probably not. Even award-winning novelist and editor Toni Morrison self-edits.  I like to first edit for clarity.  As I'm doing this, I'm also looking for typos, grammatical errors and awkward sentences.  

• Practice Detachment - I edited an author's wonderful book that was 100,000 words! When I insisted that they trim the fat, they moaned and groaned. They believed everything she'd put in the book was sooooooooo good. Something can be good, and still need to go. Once the book was published, they regretted that they hadn't left more of those "brilliant" but unnecessary paragraphs out.  Get this, no matter how stunning a word or sentence is, if it burdens or detracts from your message, it's best for all concerned that you cut it. 

• Let it Cool - Let's say you release a blog post every Thursday, like I do. Start writing it days earlier because you'll want to let it cool. It's amazing what a difference a day makes, just 24 little hours, when you've built in cooling time. Not only will you catch more typos and strange sounding sentences upon your return, but you now realize you don't wish to throw shade at your ex after all. In other words, that vomit was therapeutic. But you really want to say so and so. 

• Print or Paste - When I work with authors to publish their books, I ALWAYS, no exceptions, get a hard copy proof of the manuscript before we go to print. Here's why. The human eye can never, ever catch all the typos, awkward sentences, missing words, overused words, words not meant to be there...just from reviewing a  manuscript on the computer. If you're writing a blog post or newsletter, I suggest copying and pasting it into Word then review again.

• Hire an Editor - If you're writing a book, don't even think about not hiring a professional editor.  I repeat: Hire. An. Editor. Your friends, family and coworkers don't count as editors! Trust me, you'll most certainly regret it if you don't. Now, if you regularly produce a blog or newsletter, if you choose not to hire an editor, perhaps you can have another writer look at your piece before you post or send it. For all my books, I had one to two editors for each book. But shorter pieces, I will sometimes barter with another writer friend of mine. Other times, I just self-edit, and self-edit, AND self-edit, even after I've posted. I just can't help myself. 

Writing is a craft. The more you do it, the, uh, craftier you get. You know what I mean, if you'd like to write with strength, power and conviction then write, edit and rewrite often. ​