When should you edit your work? Much like how you should write your book, there is no right answer. There are many options, and you need to find the one that is right for you. If you don’t know what I mean by when you should edit, let’s talk through some examples and their advantages and disadvantages.
Right After You Finish
Some people have a ton of thoughts about their piece as they go, but the writer in them just needs to get it out. They hammer home the short story or even the novel in record time, but then they have a pile of extra scenes or extra ideas they know they want to add to the piece. They turn right around and start at the beginning to resume the writing, putting into the second draft everything they missed the first time.
The Good: Everything is fresh. You know what you wrote and why you wrote it; you remember themes, plots, and character arcs, and they stay close to you. You know exactly what bothered you the first time and exactly where to fix it.
The Bad: You are still very close to the book. Errors you are blind to are likely to remain unnoticed. You are effectively still writing an extended first draft.
As You Go
I have tried all the options on this page, but this is a new entry to my repertoire of writing. I write a chapter, read that chapter the next sitting, edit that chapter right then, and then write the next chapter. I developed this because, while I am a very architectural writer with a lot of detail in the pieces before I even sit down to first draft, I am presently writing a novel with a lot of time travel. It is complicated, and I am trying to make sure it is right and makes sense to a reader. So, I developed iterative loops while writing.
The Good: You get to have fresh in your mind what you said last time as you write more this time. The loop keeps the continuity strong. You get to fix even moderate-sized plot points as you go if you must so that when you have your first draft, it is much cleaner and feels more polished.
The Bad: You can get stuck in a loop here, hung up on the chapter you just finished not being good enough, and you edit it over and over again. By doing this, you never move on to the other chapters and never actually finish the piece. Additionally, too much time in any one chapter before the book is done may ultimately be lost work if you make major changes that later require you to tear the heart from that chapter. Don’t let great be the enemy of pretty good.
Way… Way Later
This is the method I usually employ. I will do a zero draft, or a very detailed outline, then I will do the first draft, and then I will walk away. Usually for three months, but it has been as long as six. I want the next time I read the book before I start to edit it to be almost like I am a reader who doesn’t know the mind of the author. Now, of course, I am the author; I know what I meant. But you would be surprised how much of the scene-to-scene, paragraph-level work you might forget. I put on my editor hat as I read, thinking, “If I were the author, how would I make this better?” Conveniently, I am, so I make notes, then I go through and start to make the edits.
The Good: Fresh eyes allow you to find errors you would never notice when you first write the story. Reading as a reader enables you to be confused by your own work and fix it. Distance allows you to be a little less attached to everything and more willing to make changes as needed. As the old saying goes, “Kill your darlings.”
The Bad: You have forgotten things that would have been self-evident when you first began the story. That extra little something you thought once to add to chapter 5? Unless you wrote it down (you should, but we will cover that in a different piece), you will forget to do it months later. You may have forgotten what you want a character to feel like or sound like, and you may make edits that suddenly feel incongruous.
All of These
There is nothing wrong with doing them all. Their bonuses sort of cancel out their negatives, and in general, any piece needs more than one edit. Try each of them and see which one makes you enjoy the act of editing the most. Because whether we want to or not, we will spend a lot of time in the editing cycle.
Get Editing!
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