Most people immediately let loose a loud groan whenever the topic of editing and revising comes up. And I get it, it feels like the worst kind of way to spend your time – re-doing all the work you just did. After so many weeks and days of laboring over WHAT WORDS to write, NOW you have to CHANGE THOSE WORDS?! (insert groan and probably a head flop on the keyboard).
BUT just bear with me a second here, ok? Pick your head up and delete the line of hhhhhhhhhh’s that your forehead made, and let’s talk about how to embrace the process of editing and revising.
First, we need to talk terminology for a second. Editing is the most commonly used term to refer to this stage, but at Eaton Press we prefer calling it “revising” over “editing”. (We use both terms in headlines to make sure everyone relates to the topic). Editing is generally a more technical process where you’re looking at sentence structure, and grammar and making sure sections and ideas flow in the right order. That’s not the most exciting work, and it will feel like a very overwhelming task if you’ve just finished writing your first draft.
But REVISING is about giving yourself some space to polish and rethink your words without the stress of getting the words on the page, meeting word count goals or writing time goals.
So, let’s talk about some Do’s and Don’ts for revising your rough draft. (See? Doesn’t that already feel better than thinking about editing?)
1. Don’t start revising until you have finished your first draft. Why? Because if you start trying to revise every paragraph as soon as you write it you’re:
- quickly feel defeated and overwhelmed
- will use “revising” as a way to feel productive during your writing time without actually writing anything new.
- Often, the first chapter of a book, and the first paragraphs of a chapter will change based on the last chapter of the book and the last paragraphs of the chapter, so it’s a big waste of time to try to revise early parts of a book before
the final parts are written.
- reminding yourself that revising is as important as writing (not a yucky chore to be endured)
- thinking about this step as a nice break from the stress of writing, and having to hit word count goals, or page number goals. Revising is about giving yourself mental space and permission to linger on a paragraph or jump around. Revising is about relaxing into your topic and getting past the first version of the ideas that you spilled when filling the blank page, and instead, finding the best ways to describe, explain and teach these ideas.
4. Do give yourself some structure and goals to avoid spinning your wheels in the revising stage, such as:
- Follow the same writing time blocking strategy you used while writing and set goals for number of pages to revise in each session.
- Start at the beginning and work your way through to the end. It’s ok to jump around to compare content between sections, but makes sure to go back to where you left off and start moving forward again, or you may miss sections.