A Simple Truth about Editing and Rewriting
Posted on: March 26, 2010
- In: editing | writing
- 4 Comments
I have been editing an interesting manuscript over the past couple weeks. While I cannot comment about the specifics, one simple truth has emerged from the process of editing and interacting with the author that I think is worth sharing. Please forgive the lack of examples.
Problems in thoughtful, but still unpolished manuscripts frequently offer authors opportunities to become clearer in their own minds about what they want to say. While it can be frustrating to discover that something one sweated over for hours will not work, it helps to embrace the problems that emerge, because they frequently force one to make connections one had not seen before. The result will be not only greater clarity in the author’s own mind, but a sharper, crisper, more interesting manuscript.
4 Responses to "A Simple Truth about Editing and Rewriting"
April 17, 2010 at 11:43 pm
Ops! I pasted the wrong link. This is the one I meant to post: http://www.hankstuever.com/blog/?p=1541
April 18, 2010 at 9:27 am
Thank you for the link. Looks like an interesting blog in general. I take a middle path when I edit other people’s work. Much is on screen, like in the blog piece to which you linked, but I also do a final read through on paper. For my own work, though, short blog posts excepted, I print out each and every draft, because paper lets me see more than even a big computer screen, and I interact with the text in a different way that is hard to explain.
A couple related posts on this blog:
http://language4you.wordpress.com/2007/05/23/on-writing/
http://language4you.wordpress.com/2007/05/22/writing-strategies/
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April 17, 2010 at 11:41 pm
Another interesting example on Editing and Rewriting can be found here: http://www.hankstuever.com/blog/?m=201003
Personally, I think that Editing is just part of the writing process: the more you edit your text, the better will be your final result. I don’t believe in writing being a short process of jotting down a few sentences on a blank paper: it requires a lot of thinking both in terms of ideas and structure.
April 18, 2010 at 9:23 am
Editing is indeed part of the writing process, but sometimes even thoroughly self-edited manuscripts can be unclear on this or that point, either because the author is too close to the subject, or the author is writing in a foreign language, to name just two possibilities. I shared these brief observations, though, because I wanted to underline the basic truth you underline. My point is that the problems that arise in the writing process, the problems that can frustrate the writer, usually offer opportunities.