Editing is hard
I'm not going to dress it up for you - I hate it
I’ve been editing my first book and there’s no getting around it - editing is hard. I’m tackling it two chapters at a time and interspersing it with firing up a game to play a couple of rounds of something, but editing and going through things is difficult.
It’s only been a while since I graduated from my Masters in Creative Writing and I’ve been trying to get down to it and get producing but it’s the editing bit that gets me. I love finding my creative flow and putting down about 5-6000 words a day when I’m ‘in the zone.’ Some might consider that too little or too much but I know it’s very dependent on someone’s stamina but when it comes to having to line edit and kill off the crap?
Ugh.
How do you do it? I am absolutely happy to listen to tips to see what might help but how do you make it interesting? Am I supposed to find it interesting? Am I broken if I don’t?
This is a short piece but I felt this needed to be a proper post instead of a note.
Fellow writers. Please help!
Oh and when can I call myself a writer? When did imposter syndrome lay off or does it ever?
You can call yourself a writer, Hayden.
Personally, I love editing because it's where the story begins to take shape. Yes, it's also the hardest part. But, in the end, the rewards outweigh the headaches. When you've got a finished book staring at you, you'll realize it wasn't so tough.
I'm 82,000 words into my third and final draft of a novel I started two years ago, last month. And once I got through the first draft, the story began telling itself. I just need to get out of the way with my hangups and self-doubt.
A book I highly recommend for the editing phase is Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell. It helped me with my first novel, and I'm re-reading it and learning new habits that are making the process smoother. Matt teaches in an MFA program in Arizona, which is my dream job. I want to teach writing in the UK.
Best of luck, Hayden. Believe in yourself. You've gotten this far already.
Cheers.
Jason