EDITING
(Day Fifty-Three)
Can I tell you how much I love editing and revising? It's by far my favorite part of the writing process. Writing the first draft is so hard -- you have to basically create something from nothing. It's almost painful, that process of putting words together into something that even marginally resembles what's in your head.
But editing. Ahhhhhh. Editing is putting words in their place. It's taking what already exists and organizing it into the best form of itself. It's following rules and guidelines and your gut at the same time to shape a gelatinous mass into a well-ordered platoon.
You'd think I'd be a very neat and organized person in real life, but no, everything around me is cluttered and messy. I just like my words organized.
I had two friends send me something to look over today, and I'm not gonna lie, it excites me. I feel very satisfied when editing, especially when editing other people's work. It's harder to edit something you wrote yourself and which you feel attached to. Plus, when you write, even if you don't realize it, you're filling in the gaps left by your words with the thoughts in your head. It takes someone without those thoughts, that background, and the history of the process you went through to write it to really see it as your reader is going to see it. To see the gaps.
Of course you can also put something down and wait a week or a month or a year -- then sometimes you have the distance you need to really edit. Or you just hate your own writing so much you feel you're never going to be a successful writer and you should just give up :)
I've also noticed editing other people's work makes me want to write, so it's a win-win. EDITING, YAY.
Can I tell you how much I love editing and revising? It's by far my favorite part of the writing process. Writing the first draft is so hard -- you have to basically create something from nothing. It's almost painful, that process of putting words together into something that even marginally resembles what's in your head.
But editing. Ahhhhhh. Editing is putting words in their place. It's taking what already exists and organizing it into the best form of itself. It's following rules and guidelines and your gut at the same time to shape a gelatinous mass into a well-ordered platoon.
You'd think I'd be a very neat and organized person in real life, but no, everything around me is cluttered and messy. I just like my words organized.
I had two friends send me something to look over today, and I'm not gonna lie, it excites me. I feel very satisfied when editing, especially when editing other people's work. It's harder to edit something you wrote yourself and which you feel attached to. Plus, when you write, even if you don't realize it, you're filling in the gaps left by your words with the thoughts in your head. It takes someone without those thoughts, that background, and the history of the process you went through to write it to really see it as your reader is going to see it. To see the gaps.
Of course you can also put something down and wait a week or a month or a year -- then sometimes you have the distance you need to really edit. Or you just hate your own writing so much you feel you're never going to be a successful writer and you should just give up :)
I've also noticed editing other people's work makes me want to write, so it's a win-win. EDITING, YAY.