Editing: Part 3 – When should I start editing?
January 25, 2008 by Lillie
Table of contents for Editing
- Editing: Part 1 – What is editing?
- Editing: Part 2 – What are the different kinds of editing?
- Editing: Part 3 – When should I start editing?
- Editing: Part 4 – What are style guides and why do I need them?
- Editing: Part 5 – What steps should I follow when I edit?
- Editing: Part 6 – What should I look for when I edit?
- Editing: Part 7 – Do I need an outside editor?
The answer to the question “When should I start editing” is the same answer to many writing and editing questions: It depends.
Writers fall into two distinct camps when it comes to editing. Some like to edit as they write. They finish a scene or a chapter and go back and edit it before moving on to the next scene or chapter. I know a few successful and prolific writers who do a good job of editing as they write. Perhaps that has always been the way they write best or maybe they developed the skill through years of experience and the pressure of deadlines.
Editing as you write requires:
- An organized and well-planned outline: If you don’t know exactly what plot point will occur in every chapter or the how you will structure your how-to book, you will end up editing material that you later decide to delete or change.
- The discipline to edit, then continue writing: Some writers spend so much time revising and polishing the first chapter or scene they never finish their book.
In my experience, most writers edit more effectively if they finish the first draft before they begin to edit. I’ve written about this earlier: The First Draft: Pure Green Dreck, Editing: Turning Dreck into Prose, Ten Tips for Self-Editing, and Seven Editing Tips for Professional and Nonprofessional Writers.
Other writers agree with me. Eric Eggertson at Common Sense PR wrote:
Only when you have the structure of the piece where you want it to be should you bother honing the wording, correcting spelling and checking facts. Why fix a typo at the beginning when you might delete the whole paragraph?
Although the post is a couple of years old, Editing Your Writing at All Kinds of Writing generated a lively discussion among several writers who share how they edit. You will see different perspectives that may help you decide which editing method you prefer.
I finish the first draft before I edit, but I do use Word’s auto-correct to correct common mistakes as I type. Unlike spell check and grammar check, auto-correct can be customized to eliminate your most common errors without creating new errors. You can add the words that are your bugbears and know that when you type harrassment, auto-correct will change it to harassment (one of my bugbears). You won’t spend any time or energy correcting those common mistakes – while writing the first draft OR while editing.
Do you edit as you write? Or do you finish your first draft before you start to edit?
In future installments, we’ll cover the various steps in editing your manuscript, assuming you have written a first draft and have “pure green dreck” to turn into powerful prose.
This is some great information. As a writer myself, editing is usually the worst part for me. I prefer to do it after the whole book is finished for some of the reasons you listed above. I would love to be added to your blogroll!
Thanks for the post, it was very informative and helpful!
Lillie Hey, I am a new reader, I love you and your work, hope to see them soon!
I don’t know, Lillie. I prefer editing from the start. As a non-native English speaker I often misspell words and my grammar is not that brilliant. I am trying to pay attention to my writing and I think it’s better to fix the error from the start then suffer later.
Of course I read the piece again when I am done and edit some more.
[...] we move on, let’s briefly revisit when to edit. I stated in the last post that I write first, then edit. That is how I work on major projects, [...]
Yeah, I see what you mean. Actually, I am not that organized in Romanian. I count on my father to edit my work.
Lillie,
I tend to edit as I write, though I also always go back and do a final edit (or two) afterward, for polish.
There are times, however, when I intentionally hold off on editing until I’ve achieved the overall flow that I’m seeking for the piece (or portion of the piece), returning later to substitute more precise or expressive language for the “placeholder” words and phrases I’ve used temporarily.
Jeanne
[...] an earlier post, I mentioned that I use auto-correct in Word while writing the first draft even though I don’t edit until the first draft is [...]
Kevin,
A lot of writers like writing better than editing. They are complete different activities – that’s why most of us prefer to write the whole book, then edit. Thanks for sharing how you work.
I’ve subscribed to your blog and look forward to reading it. I always spend some time reading a blog regularly before adding it to my blogroll, and I hadn’t discovered yours before. I tried to read a few posts just now, but the light font on the black background is too hard for me to read. I’ll start reading in my feed reader with your next post.
Welcome, tomdbtel! Hope you come back often – or subscribe to my RSS feed. I visited your blog, but I don’t read Chinese and something is lost in Google’s translation.
That’s why I said different writers work different ways, Mig. It’s great if you are organized enough that you don’t have to make major revisions. Most writers I work with are not that organized and end up moving, deleting, or revising major chunks of the work.
Of course, I do think it’s a little different in short pieces like blog posts than for long manuscripts. It’s easier to do a good job of planning a few hundred words before you start writing than to plan the plot and characterization of a 100,000 word novel. I edit as I write on blog posts and short pieces, but for longer works, I write first, then edit.
I am in awe of anyone who reads and writes more than one language. I can’t even speak another language, though I took two years of Spanish classes and live in an area with a very large Spanish-speaking population.
It sounds like you have found a system that works for you, Jeanne. That’s what’s important – not what method you use, but that the method you use works well for you.