Editing our work is crucial

Editing is very important because we are not perfect, especially when we try to translate our vision into the written word. Regardless of whether you are writing a song, a textbook, or a work of fiction, no one gets it right during its first draft. But therein lies the beauty of writing: we turn our minds and brainstorm our initial ideas, and then we can spend time later rephrasing, rearranging, and generally polishing what we’ve written so that when the target audience has the opportunity. to read it, be brilliant!

Of course, the number of times a writing requires editing is subjective, and we can leave that discussion for another time, however, as I mentioned earlier, the golden rule is to give yourself and work a ‘break’ before attacking. . with a red pen.

Why should I take a break before editing?

Easy! When you are so into a project, you can be completely blinded by the little mistakes, because you are focusing on the big picture. Don’t get it wrong, it’s absolutely fine! After all, in the first draft, we want to aim for the stars and produce content as uninhibited as possible. That’s the idea behind the concept of ‘free writing’ and NaNoWiMo: where, for a certain period of time, you keep writing whatever comes out of your head, to overcome self-imposed mental barriers. But then when it comes to essential editing, you want a fresh set of eyes; and this is only achieved by reviewing your manuscript after a break.

Edit your own work first!

Naturally, people may be tempted to hand over a first draft directly to someone else or to pay an editor, but my personal opinion is that you should always review your own work before giving someone else a flat file. This is because your project is your personal vision and only you really understand its concept and direction at the time; so giving it to someone else at such an early stage could cloud or misinterpret the direction and “spirit” of the work, because your outside editor will interpret the body of the work differently from your draft and edit accordingly. What you receive may not be what you once intended and could end up wasting everyone’s time. It’s best to review your own work first to get it out of first draft status before giving it to someone else.

Take a break from your work

So the point is: always edit your own work in the first round, and while doing so, keep some distance from the project before doing so. How you use this pause is up to you; Some people may start a new book, work on something completely different, start designing the cover, read, or stop writing altogether for a while (which I wouldn’t recommend, but each on their own!). But the point is that, through this distance, when you get to edit the writing after a sufficient amount of time, you will be in a much better position to see the glitches and errors that you would have otherwise missed, simply because in that moment of writing, it was invested too much.

The time apart will mean that you will have forgotten many of the intricacies of the project and therefore you will be able to view it more as a beginning reader than as an author, which is to your advantage in first draft editing.

We have all been there!

We see it all the time – when someone has been writing, for example, a report for weeks and then says they have reviewed it 100 times, only for you to find out that they have misspelled their name all along! Or the author’s old adage: “I wrote all day and hated everything I wrote and decided I was a terrible writer, only to reread it the next day and realized it wasn’t that bad.” We have all been there. But it does act as evidence to support the need to take a break before editing.

Distance is paramount

We are only human and we get too bogged down in things to be able to edit our own work right away. So the next time you finish your poem, your manuscript, your homework or your white paper, let some time pass, take a breath, let the work (and your mind) “cool down”, and only then should you reach the edit cover to give it a good clean.

After this, you may decide to give it to a third party, but only once you are satisfied that you have the project complete and in a solid state before doing so.

Any comments or feedback? What is your process?

Christopher- CN Melotti