Episode Eight - Editing

Yeah, so self-revision for me, I think it's oftentimes about restraint.

I think when I started writing early on, I thought revision was just fixing the sentences and making them sound really good.

And there is a part of that that I think is important.

And for me, sometimes I'll go in and really focus on making my... like language, very specific.

I want like the images to be really crisp, but like that is like, I think almost like the last phase of revision.

A lot of the time I'm getting better at the more structural kind of her people call it developmental edits or, um, people calling it, um, what did somebody else call it? Um, I can't remember now, but like just sort of your, the edits that focus a bit more on like plot or character or structure or just like the big, big things.

And so a trick that I have to use because I will just immediately start like tweaking sentences is that after I finish a couple drafts of a book, I'll like PDF it and force myself and take some time away and then come back to it and force myself to read it without being able to fix it.

Oh, that's so smart.

And make notes about kind of structural things.

But I actually think that when it comes to my like own self editing prowess, I actually this is like my for like my weakest

thing.

And I don't know why it is like I struggle a lot with my, you know, making my own.

Um, doing it for myself, but like, I do it professionally for other people.

Um, and I do it in film and TV, um, or, you know, I haven't done it so much recently, but I worked as a story editor for like a long time in television.

Um, and so it's.

It is just different, I think, like looking at your own work.

And so I have just learned to I don't use beta readers, but I bring our agent in a bit earlier than I used to.

I used to always wanted to like take it as far as I could go and be like, but I've just kind of noticed that about myself.

It's like I need eyes early to help me with the like big.

sort of things, the big sort of structural stuff.

And then I can kind of go hog wild on the line edits later on by myself.

But I don't know, what about you? Do you have like self-editing tips or tricks?

Well, I should have done a little spiel, but I think self-editing is the hardest thing to do, not emotionally.

I think receiving notes from other people is emotionally harder, but self-editing is extraordinarily hard.

We're not meant to be able to do it.