This week we’ve been discussing editing. I thought it would be fun to bring that conversation to you so that you can benefit from some of what we were discussing. The topic arose because we run writing sprints on stream Monday through Friday. During these writing sprints, we work on our writing, editing, or anything else we need to be productive with.
The sprints start at 8:30 am and they run until 1:00 pm. We do six half-hour sprints and have 10-minute breaks in between. If that sounds like something that might help you with your productivity, definitely come and join us.
Editing is a fairly controversial topic, not for the reasons you’d think, though. Pretty much everyone agrees that editing is necessary. However, people edit in a couple of different ways. For instance, I do the majority of my editing before I even write. You might wonder how that’s possible. Well, I think about the words I’m about to type or speak a lot. Then I do it, and then I type them or speak them.
This is a slightly slower way of writing, but it tends to produce a cleaner first draft. On the other hand, some people prefer to spill words onto the page, then go through afterwards and clean it up. These are the two extremes of editing, and there are people who fall everywhere in between. There isn’t a right way to edit. There’s just what’s effective for you.
What I want to discuss regarding editing is when it’s not actually helpful. Editing is a very personal thing, and it can sometimes be hard for us to maintain proper perspective. We can get lost in the process and reach a point where we don’t know whether we are improving or worsening our content. Sometimes, after editing something, we think to ourselves, “This is much better.” Then, after a while, we read it again and wonder why we ever thought it was better. Then we have to go through and edit again.
That’s where I think it’s very helpful to embrace a philosophy of ruthless honesty. Ruthless honesty is a principle that I try to apply in all areas of my life. It’s about being exceptionally honest about the state of everything. So, when I sit down and look at my manuscript, I want to be ruthlessly honest with it. I want to understand exactly what it is in reality, not in my perspective or in other people’s perspectives, but in truth. This is incredibly helpful because it allows me to make good decisions. You can only make good decisions if you have good information, and you can only have good information if you’re being honest.
So, when I look at a piece of my writing, I’m not trying to gauge how I feel about it. I’m trying to objectively ask, “Is this good writing?” Sometimes the answer is a resounding, “No, this is terrible.” It’s not good writing at all. I can’t believe I wrote that. And that is accurate. When that’s the case, then I know I need a lot of editing. But sometimes I look at something I’ve written and I ask, “Is this good writing?” And I say, “Yes, actually, it is good writing.” It’s maybe not the best writing that has ever existed. It’s maybe not even the best writing that I could possibly do after pouring my soul out onto the page, but it is objectively good writing. At that point, I know that I don’t actually need to edit. What I need to do instead is give it to other people and let them edit.
As writers, we can often get stuck in this trap of self-editing. We keep changing things because we don’t know if it’s good or not. The reality is that you can be there forever. There’s nothing that can get you out of that except finally making the decision, “This is either good writing or bad writing.” And if it’s bad writing, you need to keep editing it.
If you want to stop editing the same thing over and over again, maybe you’re on your third version of the same manuscript, or maybe you’re on your 50th version. That sounds like a lot, but I know people who have spent almost 20 years working on the same story and it’s not finished. It’s not even the same story they started with. It’s been edited and redone so many times that it bears no resemblance to what they originally started with. You don’t want to do that. You want to write and you want to put that writing out into the world. The only way to do that is to be honest about whether or not your writing is up to scratch.
If you ever read a book and think to yourself, “Oh, that’s worse than my writing,” then you’re probably ready to publish. You probably don’t need to edit anymore. You can probably just ship it. And then once you’ve shipped it, you can improve by iterating with another story.
So, that is today’s messy video about editing. Stop. Seriously. If you’re one of those people who gets stuck in editing things over and over again, just stop. Believe me when I say the pain of potential rejection from putting your stuff out into the world is way better than the crippling fear that drives you to keep editing something over and over again.
But I’m interested in knowing what you think about this, because I know a lot of people have different opinions on this. Why don’t you tell me in the comments below? Are you the kind of person who has edited the same thing over and over again? And if so, why? What is it about your work that doesn’t allow you to move forward? And if you’re somebody who likes to just write and ship, then tell me about that as well. What makes you decide not to edit?
YouTube Video Link: https://youtu.be/99-sacQY_Ko
Thanks for reading and watching.
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