Although many of my wonderful
writer tweeples responded with glee, I got more than a couple of messages that
went along the lines of err, I don't know, Ava. Editing? Want to do
mine for me? *wink wink*
It got me thinking.
Once upon a time, long, long ago in a galaxy
far, far away, I used to hate editing. It's not that I thought it unnecessary—I knew it
was necessary—I just couldn't stand the thought of re-reading something I wrote
half a dozen (or—God forbid—more) times. I'd already done the hard work of
getting the first draft down, did I really want to spend months or years
flipping things around and cutting passages and adding new things and
re-reading re-writing re-reading re-writing?
Over the course of trunking many-a-novel, I
learned the hard way about the importance of editing—real editing,
and I realized that if I was going to bring the fullest potential out of my
stories, I had to learn to love to edit. Period.
Surprisingly, saying ok, I need to
love editing now didn't magically make me start to love to edit.
What did change my opinion of editing (and this is a little
surprising), was editing the same WIP over the course of two and a half
years.
I'll admit, initially I got pretty sick of it,
and when I discovered after a break from the WIP that it needed complete
re-writing after a couple of rounds of edits already, I resisted the process. I
didn't want to re-write it—it would take weeks, and then I'd
probably need to edit it again and what if it needed more re-writing
after that?
I rewrote it. Then something weird
happened.
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| Photo credit: AlaskaTeacher on Flickr |
And suddenly, editing wasn't so bad after
all.
When I didn't like editing, I was looking at
it all the wrong way—I thought of it as this extra step, this
horrendous extra task that inevitably meant more hard work and
when I sat down in front of the computer I thought, ugh, I have to edit
today.
What I didn't realize is that editing is so
much more than that—it's a chance to refine your work, to really make your
writing shine, and once you start to see your work evolve, well, it can be kind
of fun.
I'm not saying editing isn't hard, time-consuming
work—it absolutely is. What I am saying is that the way you
look at it can largely change your experience.
Let's face it, if you want to be a writer,
you're going to be doing a lot of editing. Whether it's
editing your first or second or fifth or fifteenth draft, editing your query
letter or synopsis or author bio or blurb, editing your first book or your
twentieth book, the life of the writer is an endless cycle of writing and
editing and editing and writing.
It's part of the process, and it's a step that
you can't skip. So if we have to do it anyway, we might as well try to enjoy
it, right?
What do you think? Am I crazy for loving to
edit? What are your favorite and least favorite parts of the editing process?
