Learning to Love Editing.
Diary of Being a Writer; Month 61
Had you told me a couple of years ago that I would ever come to enjoy editing, I would have been surprised.
I have often talked about how I love writing. Previously, I never really considered editing as part of the fun bit. Editing was the work you had to do after you had run off with your flights of fancy, letting your imagination run wild with little thought for grammar and concise language.
And while yes, I still think the making things up bit of the process is the most fun part, I now enjoy editing. It is a different sort of enjoyment..
Creating the story is a creative process. Editing is like puzzle solving.
You have to seek out the ill advised words and eradicate them. For me, words like just and so. Oh, and very. Then you have to work out if maybe some of them are still necessary. Maybe they are in some dialogue, maybe they just fit and maybe you should remove them immediately. Each one will need to be assessed.
A fun way to do it is to remove every single one and then go and see if you can see where they are missing. If you can’t, maybe they didn’t need to be there.
When you get suggestions from your editor the first couple of times, it can seem overwhelming and intimidating. Who am I…
