Editing Your Writing

Editing creates great writing; HOWEVER, don’t get stuck there trying to be perfect. You just got started putting your voice on paper.

Let’s review ideas to keep your writing alive and moving.

Give yourself total freedom to write. Write whatever comes. Be bold. Write as fast as you can. It’s okay to be sloppy. Get it on paper or the screen. Keep writing until you’ve said what is on your mind and in your heart. Write as though you are speaking to whomever you want to hear you;---- or to whomever you know will understand.

Okay: stop, breathe, relax your fingers and your body. Way to go. Take at least a stretch break.

Now read what you wrote to see if it makes sense. If not, add or change a sentence or word. You may want to move a sentence or a paragraph. You may find a better word to say what you want understood. Read it aloud.

Make changes to convey what you want.

(A brief book that’s never lost its power for writers is called The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White.)

When you start writing afresh the next day, go back to what you wrote in your last writing session. Read. Again, make changes. You are editing.

THEN immediately go on to your new writing. When you start each new session reading and editing what you finished last session, you’ll know what you last wrote to keep your ideas flowing. You don’t have to go back to the very beginning of your story.

Writing and repeating this pattern will lead you to your first essay. Another essay may lead to a short story. When you go on to the next essay, you’ll want to re-read the first essay.   BRAVO

Does the story reflect a thread that brings one essay to another?

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