Revising Makes Your Work Shine

In talking with other writers, I’ve found that I’m a rather rare bird in that I love rewriting my work as much as I love the first heady rush of getting it down on the page.

 

Don’t get me wrong—I love raw creation writing. On the days where writing is just me and a blank screen and a goal of 2,000 words set down on there before the dog’s evening walk, it can be glorious. The words just flow unhindered from my subconscious out through my fingers, amazing my conscious mind with what the characters are choosing to do. It’s not always like that: some days it’s a painful slog from start to finish, and I inevitably begin to get in “the flow” just when I need to stop.

 

However, I love just as much the days where I go back and delete whole paragraphs and write better ones. I love fussing with the punctuation in a sentence: going back and forth with commas, semicolons, and em-dashes, or just cutting things up with periods, trying to make it as perfect as I possibly can, true to the character’s voice and my own standards.

 

And not too many writers love that second part. They’ve hit “the end,” and they are ready to be at the end. The rewriting, reworking, and tinkering is not a joy, but a tedious chore, or worse, a painful one.

 

I’ve never really stopped to wonder, until today, why so many others hate that step while I enjoy it just as much as the initial act of creation, and certainly more than the other parts of being an author—like dealing with social media, just as a completely random example. Today, however, the answer popped into my head out of nowhere: I enjoy rewriting and editing because I love being an editor as well as being a writer. When I edit other people’s works, I am trying to take their writing to the next level, trying to help their voice and vision be polished to a glowing sheen. I do not judge them for those words they can never spell right or run-on sentences or when they have put a description of something a bit late and need to move it up. Whatever the issue, I see the bits that haven’t lived up to the potential and I find ways to improve those bits. I can always make it better or advise the writer on how to do it. There is good writing under the rough stuff. You just have to bring it out.

 

So, when I see parts of my own writing where I clearly was having a rough day or I got ahead of myself, it’s not this terribly disheartening or stressful thing. I don’t beat myself up. (Although I do often laugh at myself.) I know I can fix the problems. If I don’t know what to do immediately, I know that after playing around with it a bit (or going off and not thinking about it for a while and then coming back to it) that I will figure out how to fix things.

 

I am comfortable with editing and rewriting other people’s work. And, I suddenly realize, that’s why I love it with mine. I know that I can take my rough writing and smooth it until it shines. I enjoy that process with other people’s work, so getting to do that with my own work is even better.

 

The main thing, I think, is that I have seen other writers’ work in a rough state—even the work of writers I really admire—and I know that my rough draft is no rougher. I can be kind to myself. I don’t immediately get flooded with self-doubt or impostor syndrome or any other fear.

 

I was a writer before I was an editor, but, before I wrote my first novel, I spent years in the editing mines, taking pickax and shovel (or red pen and track changes) to others’ sentences and paragraphs. And maybe every writer should do that, if they can, just take time to become comfortable editing work to which they do not have an emotional connection, so that when the thing you are editing is your beloved story, your cherished characters, dealing with that first pass on your rough draft doesn’t become a dreaded thing full of stress and self-doubt.

 

This is not to say that I do not need an editor. I love my editor, and she has saved my bacon at some point with every story I’ve sent to her. Even though I have done my best to polish my story, I strongly believe that one cannot edit one’s own work to a point of “ready to publish” completeness, and that another set of eyes is vital to the process.

 

I believe that writers will always need an external editor. However, I am now realizing that my training as an editor has made me a better writer—and one who can enjoy all parts of a process that is not easy or trivial at any stage. So if an editing job opportunity comes along or if a friend asks for a review of their story, it might not just make sense on a financial level, or a friendship one, but it could help your own writing and your own enjoyment of writing, in ways that you never would have expected.

 

Even if you cannot fit editing other writers into your schedule, the important thing to take away is simply to be kind to yourself when you go over your rough draft. Roughness doesn’t mean failure or inferiority; it is an invitation to even more creativity. The editing stages are just as much about art as the first rush of invention—and are equally vital to telling your story.