The Editing Journey

I'm Butchering My Baby!

The least glorious or glitzy part of the writing process and the focus of this article, the editing process is a truth no writer outside of school can avoid. I’ve coasted through my entire academic career off of first drafts and I’m damn proud of how strong of a writer it’s made me. Did it come from a place of laziness? Yeah, absolutely. Did it also come from a place of not understanding how to properly edit a paper down? Also yes. Am I sad that I missed out on that skill? Not especially, and I’ll tell you why. But first, the preamble.

I grew up the child of two academics, one an english teacher, and the other a special education teacher. Books, writing, education, and creation have all been a huge part of my life ever since I was small. I didn’t trust people, I don’t know why. Sometimes I’ve been vindicated, more recently I’ve started to recognize that it wasn’t worth it to play it so safe that I never confided in the world around me, never let people get truly close to me. I was profoundly lonely. Poor me, that’s not what I’m here to say. All this to say that stories and writing are what I had and they’re important to me.

Even in school I was good at writing. No savant, maybe, but I was good and I was fast. I’d get a first draft done up in under an hour and be looking at more than five pages sometimes. “What would they do next?” you’re wondering. I’d turn that bitch in is what I’d do next. I know, nothing special, most kids didn’t ever edit their papers. I got good grades in my essay-based classes, especially creative writing. I wrote short stories and even sometimes shared them. For my senior project (a graduation requirement that I actually didn’t mind that much) I studied under a published author and wrote a full-length novel, one that I’ve never returned to. All this is to say that I’m new to editing as I am to trusting people.

Those of you that follow me know that I’m writing another full-length novel, a series of them actually, and, in a move that’s entirely foreign to me, I’m actually editing it. Not only am I editing it (before hopefully getting an agent) but I’ve edited more than 400 pages of it. So here’s my takeaways so far.

First and foremost I’ve found it can be fun, which is antithetical to everything I’ve ever known about editing. Not glitzy, not glamorous, and most definitely not fun. The whole purpose is painful scrutiny, a chopping block and cutting room, the floor of which surely must be littered with the best and brightest moments of my cherished work. Maybe, maybe, but that comes later. My editing journey is one without an editor, only myself to blame and hold me accountable. I’ve been reading and rereading my work, and I’m shocked to say I’m not cringing, and trimming the fat wherever I find it (there’s a lot). It’s been therapeutic to clip and slice away the sentences that don’t fit, mend the ones that don’t make sense, and amend my book into something more distilled and pure. It’s been its own, strange kind of fun, but fun nonetheless. It’s like I get to play a whole new role, like I get to be a professional for a moment and say “hm, here’s what you need to do now to get this all wrapped up and neat.” Playing pretend and rolling around in the authority that maybe I’ll never have, maybe I don’t even want.

The second thing I’ve discovered, which somewhat plays into the first, is that I have the excuse to go over and over and over my own works and projects, pretending like I’m doing myself a service while reveling in my own vanity. I get to rediscover all of the details that didn’t quite stick in my brain the first time, I get to watch my baby grow and evolve into something greater than itself, and I get to witness myself becoming a stronger writer. Sure, I could just go back over and beta read my own work at any time, but, for my own part, I get this sort of guilty feeling pouring over me when I spend too much time on my own work. It’s a project to prove to myself that I’m a writer, in a way, to prove that I’m good enough to get published or at least recognized. In a self-loathing sort of way it’s my own vanity, in another it’s for the love of the game, the genre, the craft. I love my storyline, I love my characters, I love my work! Now I get to make it better, more fulfilling, do a favor for it that I’ve never afforded any of my other pursuits, pour my time into it and show the love that I have for it, show the love and respect I have for myself and my hobbies. Again, it’s therapeutic; I’m reconciling with myself and what I care about.

Third: It’s made me a better writer and a better reader. If you have no other reason to edit, do it for this one. It pays to be your own editor, at least in the short run. Beta readers and professional editors will take you a long way, all the way to the bestseller list if you’re exceptionally lucky, but ultimately only you will ever know your vision. Stay true to yourself, do it for yourself. Your next project will thank you for it. You’ll write faster, write better, feel more comfortable both creating and showing off the work you’ve done. That kind of confidence and enjoyment, not to mention the skill, is owed to one of two things: narcissism or experience. You likely want the latter. The editing journey has done just that for me. I like to think my first drafts are just that, first drafts, but that they’re also pretty fine. Reading over and over through it all has been an exercise in humility, I have to acknowledge that I’m imperfect and that my book is even more so. It needs changes, craves them, and it’s my responsibility to provide.

Editing has been a strange sort of re-entry into proper education, teaching myself a new skill that I really should have learned a long time ago. But again, I’m not broken up over never having bothered to learn, it’s something to do now. My laziness working in tandem with my overwhelming desire to be accepted turned me into a one-them writing machine capable of puking up a B+ worthy ten page paper in under an hour, that’s not nearly as easily taught as editing. Still, it shan’t be neglected any further. No, no, I’ve changed my tune.

Maybe these points are obvious to you, but they aren’t really to me. I figured the editing process was best left to the professionals. Something along the lines of “writing’s a passion, editing’s a job” and therefore not my unpaid responsibility. I’m thankful to have taken the opportunity for my own work, not that I had much choice, to mature and move on from these ideas. Some people it does with money, others without, but regardless of your employment status editing pays handsomely.