Editing do you love to hate it?
Does anybody love editing as much as writing the first draft? I have had to train myself not to push the “Publish” button as soon as I have finished writing a blog because past experience has taught me that there are always mistakes.
Novels, (two on the go for longer than I can bear to declare) are different – you fully expect there to be many drafts – not least because – if it is your first novel and it’s taken a very long time, then your skill as a writer not to mention your ideas, will have changed by the time you are xxx% of the way through.
I like to write in longhand because it stops the temptation to edit as you go along which slows the flow but also because I can write faster than I can type which also holds back the creativity. Then the only problem is typing up because then I will edit as I go along so it is VERY SLOW.
One thing that has become easier in this digital age, is spell-checking. If using a word-processing programme, I like to have the Paragraph button active because it then shows all the extra spaces and the difference between paragraphs and line returns, but using some apps like Blogger, this button is not there. I also use Grammarly which not only spellcheck but checks grammar as well. In fact, Grammarly also asses your writing style which, annoyingly, always marks me as “Formal”.
With Blogger, I have to remember to add all the Tags which means at least one read-through but I do realize that waiting ten minutes and reading it through a couple of times does give the chance to remember those bits I thought of lying awake in the early morning planning the next post.
Blogging is not the throwaway smatterings of Twitter, birdshit on the bonnet of life – here today, washed off tomorrow (sorry if Twitter is your thing though you are here on a blog site!). Blogging offers a place to be more thoughtful, to develop and launch ideas out into the world, so it demands a little more attention to detail, a little more of the polishing which is editing…