I Seem To Hate Editing

I hate editing short stories. I don't mind the first few passes, but after 4 times, it becomes a laborious and very boring process because most errors are gone, and I have to find the tiny ones. Like misusing the word in.

I loose all interest at that point, and if I force myself to do it, my mind skips the little errors, so editing becomes pointless.

It's not that I find my stories boring. If I leave them alone for a couple of days and I come back, I'm even a bit surprised at myself, and I even catch errors that I didn't before. I've spoken of this elsewhere. I call it "draft aging".

Opinions?

How many times do you edit your short story?

Do you ever get sick of your own work?

 

I don't write a lot of shorts, but when I do, I go over them incessantly. It's so much less of a commitment than making another editing pass on my novel (which I've also done too many times.) I wrote a flash piece for a contest recently, and I can't stop going over it even after submitting it. It drives me a little crazy that I can't change those ten or so words (including a typo, argh) since I already turned it in.

I do, though, believe in doing exactly what you said and let it sit for a while, days, at least, if not longer, so I can see it with fresh eyes. On advice from Stephen King and others, when I finished the novel, I let it sit for months before I reread it. I've been over it a lot of times since, though.

 

That sounds like a positive mindset to have. I can't relate though. I'm really happy when the editing phase is over. I can't stand looking at the same thing over and over and over...

It might be one of my flaws, now that I think about it.

 

So stop doing it.

Good enough is good enough. 'Done' doesn't have to mean perfect. Life's too short to lose sleep to a typo.

 

But most of my stories get submitted to the contest. It doesn't look very good to have an obvious grammar error. In a situation where the stories are really good, voters start looking for the smallest reason to reject.

I did make a pretty big whoopsie and submitted a rather badly edited story a few months ago. It didn't perform very well.

So, editing matters. And to broaden the topic outside the contests, it makes me wonder whether agents/publishers will take you less seriously if you leave an obvious typo. Not saying they do. I have no idea.

 

Neil Gaiman said something a while back about how no matter how meticulously you and your editor both go over it, the first thing you'll see when you open your newly printed book is a typo, so it happens. I think some typos are expected by the pros. Everybody makes them. It matters more, I imagine, when someone obviously doesn't know the difference between their and there, having switched them all over the book or repeatedly uses the wrong prepositions or can't match up verb agreement. I'm guessing that stuff is harder to ignore than a legitimate mistake here and there.

 

Actually this is just the way it works. It's why it's always recommended that beyond a certain point you put a story away for a few months and then come back to it with a fresh eye. It becomes over-familiar. What we're highly familiar with we stop seeing, the mind is programmed to ignore it and to instead pay more attention to the novel (meaning the new or unfamiliar). Hence the need to put a story away for a few months and let it become unfamiliar. This is why a story can never really be fully revised and edited in time for a contest entry (assuming one takes a month or less to write and revise it). More like a second or third draft I think. Though sometimes that's enough, if the first throw-down was unusually successful. It's why I often recommend picking up older contest entries and revising on them (not the most recent one).

 

As someone who spent several hours judging contest entries today, let me tell you - editing is so so important.

Errors in grammar, the use of incorrect words that the spell checker doesn't catch, and even minor punctuation errors, can rip me right out of a story that I'd been fully immersed in. Anything that can disrupt the flow for the reader must be avoided. It's frustrating to encounter errors in works that are otherwise quite good.

I've submitted contest entries that I wrote from start to finish in a couple hours on the day of the deadline, and thought that they were good enough. Sometimes they are, but more time spent editing could have made them great. Even those that I spent extra time on can end up being not quite polished enough. I'd say if you feel like you've done enough editing, and have done the "let it sit for a while and then return" thing, and are still unsatisfied...maybe post it up in the workshop. Fellow members here have pointed out obvious mistakes that I'd made even after I'd read through my story more than a dozen times. Another set of eyes can really do wonders.

Edit, edit, edit, and let more time pass between edits if feasible. Editing is vital, but also, one should never begin an impossible quest for absolute perfection. You have to eventually consider a work complete and start submitting it. I loathe to think of how many awesome stories are out there collecting proverbial dust over years, because the writer of them is obsessed with a concept of perfection that by design cannot be reached. You need to strike that ideal balance where you strive for quality, but also with the understanding that you can only take that story so far.

 

I read some of my older entries and I honestly didn't like them much to begin with. There's only a small handful of stories I've written that I actually like.

What I have been thinking of doing is reviewing my contest entries and their weaknesses in my blog, one by one. I dunno, it's an interesting idea to further reflect on my mistakes. I'm not sure though. Seems a bit unusual.

Oh, WF.com judging, right? I get your pain. I've done it two times and I bailed this month. It takes too long to do properly and I wanted to focus on my contest entries.

At the same time, it's so rewarding to do!

This is what I was expecting to hear too. It's one of those things in life that you dislike doing, but have to do anyways. Sooner or later I'll start submitting to magazines. I'm thinking at the start of 2024. And I'll pay extra attention to editing!

Is there such a thing as... group editing?

 

I never let that stop me. What's the opposite of unusual—ordinary? Not really my goal. I like to create my own path and do what seems to me like it will work, whether others are doing it or not.

 

Sure, it matters, but if the typo's really that obvious you'll most likely have spotted it before the fifth pass and your brain has switched off. If your brain has switched off, you're not doing anything useful anyway. If you've got the time stick it in a drawer and come back a couple of weeks later; if you don't have the time, ship it and stop caring. A submitted story with a typo has more chance of winning than one that never got submitted in the first place.

 

Every writer has to find a process that works for them. In my case, I'm not one to plough through a first draft, writing by the seat of my pants, just getting it all down. I edit as I go, get the foundation solid as I go. I begin with a lot of thinking, and while writing spend as much (or more) time thinking about it as the actual writing. I am what has been called a "rolling reviser."

The risk with being a rolling reviser is getting bogged down in perfectionism. But this slow approach works for me. As I am writing a story, I constantly go back to the beginning as I write and edit and make changes as I go.

 

I suppose a drawer refers to a digital folder for me, but yeah That seems to be the best solution.

I have never heard of a rolling-reviser before. Interesting. But I don't work like that. If my story's foundation sucks, I toss it and begin anew. Well, unless it's an easy fix.

My editing methods will need work

 

I'm a rolling reviser too. Here's how I tend to approach it in a nutshell:

I mentioned somewhere that I start with a synopsis. That's at least partially true, but so far it hasn't been a complete story synopsis. More partial at best, with big chunks left out, and some parts more like first draft level, and some parts just in notes form. I think of it as a patchwork quilt, I take whatever I've got for ideas, in whatever form they're written in, and patch them together to give me some idea of the basic shape of the story. Usually this has some big holes in it and some parts where I write multiple possible scenarios. A lot of setences start with the word Maybe. (Maybe this happens, maybe that happens). I don't llike having things too nailed down in the beginning, possibility is important to me. All these synopsis parts and maybe statements are in red or blue (red for instructions to myself, blue for synopsis or notes), right on what will eventually become the manuscript. Then I start to replace all the red and blue with black lettering, which is worked up to at least first draft level. When I get something done up in black I can remove the red and blue parts it replaced. This way I have one document with all of it in place, I don't need to keep checking my notes, my outline etc.

Then I'll start writing scenes. Some parts will be in synopsis form, but developed farther beyond whatever I already had in the original patchwork quilt (what some people call a zero draft I think). But on some parts I now have a storng enough idea that I can go ahead and knock out a first draft version, with many parts done in pure telling and often present tense. At this stage I'm often still playing with what person to use (first or third).

As I move through in this way, after putting down a few scenes in rough form, I can start to see the big idea better and some ideas might solidify up, and it might require changes to things I've already put down. When I make the changes it's usually in synopsis form, unless I have a pretty good idea how to go about it.

Basically different parts of it are at different levels of completion—anything from rough notes to rough draft to something pretty close to a well-edited first draft. And I will definitely edit as I go, and I read over what I've got again and again, making little changes or adding notes or comments. It gets a little more fleshed out or refined each time I read over it. Sorry, I feel like I said the same thing over and over.

A big influence on this approach was something Seven Crowns wrote a while back (let me see if I can find it), plus the Snowflake Method (also recommended by Seven Crowns). I found a couple, I'll list them below:

• #1 Daydream
• #2 Creative Taxidermy
• #3 Plot Lines for Each Character

So really my whole approach is to start rough and keep revising and editing all along the way. On some stories I need to find a powerful beginning, that has a certain kind of rhythm or something to it, or I can't figure out what to do from there. Well, I guess I always want that, but on Beastseekers I'm having a really hard time finding the right beginning (might be other problems really). Usually I find that pretty quick and get rolling.

 

On Season of the Witch I had the skeleton of a whole first chapter that I eventually realized was all exposition and neat stuff happening, but I really didn't need any of it. Right before I posted a section of it in the Showcase I deleted all of that garbage that was bogging it down and let chapter 2 become chapter 1. It works so much better.

 

I remember the daydream post. Daydreams are nice but they don't work for me. I find that the end product is different than what I had in mind, and I am happy with it anyway. Is that a skill issue? No idea.

Editing novels is a different animal than editing short stories though. For my first trilogy, I probably went back and forth and made corrections on the go before I settled for the foundation that I made. The trilogy has eight drafts overall.

For my second trilogy, I didn't do that. I felt a bit more confident so I just straight up wrote three novels, in prose, without looking back at all.

I have fully planned a third singular novel (using the Snowflake method!) and I plan to take the same approach—no looking back. Just go forward. I haven't started writing it yet though.

 

This actually happened to me with my first trilogy's 1st chapter. It was done in exposition and telling, and I was a complete beginner at the time. I did not like it so I tossed the 1st chapter before I went ahead and re-did it with showing. But that was intuitively. I hadn't the slightest clue about show/tell.

Not that I was a master at it from day 1. Lol, my first drafts are all cringe.

 

I guess it depends on how you define daydreaming, and of course it changes

I don't think it's possible to just write without first thinking about what you're going to write. This is what I think SC means by daydreaming. Sometimes I do that part sitting here at the desk, more often when I'm elsewhere. As I've said recently somewhere, ideas will hit me when I'm cooking or watching a video or whatever, and then I develop them for a while in my head. Then hopefully I can write them down before they fade. But I mean, you have to do that part before you start the typing. Sometimes I'll sit outside, or go for a walk, or think while I'm mowing the lawn or something. All of these are ideal for thinking. You've got no screens or music or anything to distract you, and if you're mowing the lawn or washing dishes or whatever, that's simple repetitive work that allows your mind to concentrate on other things. Ideal.

And as for it changing, it needs to. The original ideas are just a starting point, then you lay them out in words, develop, modify until it seems like it might work as a story, and then of course there's more revising and editing. It never goes directly from original idea to finished story with no changes. But if anybody starts typing with no ideas in their head, whatever they end up with will not be a story. More like gibberish

 

Editing is part of the revision process, and it's so much more than just catching typos. My writing is pretty clean and I do like to edit as I go. But it's not the little typos that I'm particularly concerned about. I tend to find most of those in my first pass of revision. But what I'm mostly concerned about is the language and the story itself. I always find places where I can either tighten up the language or reword/rewrite a section or so to make it so much better.

And then there is the story itself. I believe revision is where the magic happens. The last story I wrote was pretty good. But pretty good isn't the level I want to be at when seeking publication. I had originally written the story to be somewhat funny. Like I said, it was okay. And there weren't really flaws on a sentence level. I decided to make my story darker. It didn't take too much to make this change. Sure, a little more work than looking for typos, but now I have a pretty killer story.

I have no idea how many times I go through a story when it comes to revision and editing. Probably about a dozen times, I would guess. And every time my story becomes better for it. A short story is about twenty pages. It's not a lot to go through and really perfect. I don't do anything special when editing except just read the same way I always do. From just doing that, any typos or problems or ways to improve the story just sort of appear to me each time I go through it. Honestly, I could probably edit forever.

Don't get me wrong. I hate the idea of revision, but that's because I know it can be a lot of work. Part of me sometimes thinks it would be easier to write a whole new story. The average short story length is 3k-5k words. And I'm not sure that it is actually any easier.Editing and revision will still be needed. No one writes a perfect first draft. A first draft is probably the halfway point. And even though I hate the idea of editing, I can get into the zone with it the same way I can with writing. Then I start to have some fun with it and explore new ideas which can somewhat reshape a story completely or make the story about something other than I thought it was about. My stories don't always change all that much. It depends on the story. But I do love when my story starts to become something other than intended and better than I thought it could be.

 

It is.

This is not true. It's at least not true for me. And I think you're well aware that pantsers do exist. I'm not sure why you so often state things that make it seem like they don't.

 

I assume you mean pantsers. Yeah, I know they exist, because I am one, though now I'm playing around with some level of plotting.

But thinking about a story isn't the same as plotting. I don't know how you could think that's what I meant. Are you saying you don't have any characters or storyline at all in mind, you just sit down with a totally blank mind and put your fingers on the keys, and somehow a story magically appears on the paper? That would be an amazing skill if someone could do it!

 

Yes. That is exactly how I write.

 

It isn't possible. You might not already have characters and story idea in mind when you first sit down, but you need to before you start typing, otherwise you end up with a string of meaningless letters. At the most basic level, you can't type a word without thinking of the word first. And it's even more critical for an entire paragraph, if you want it to be coherent and make any sense. And if you want a story with characters interacting, you need to stop and think up your characters and put them in a situation. It might be only seconds before you write it, but it's a necessary first step. If you type without thinking at all first you get something like this:

sdojhnsvhpoj]UIQQQ3Q]I=IW0]Hj
​

This is all I'm saying.

 

But this is how I've always worked. I've said it before that I seem to write on autopilot. I don't really know how else to explain it. I don't stop to think about anything. I just stop when I stop. But while I'm writing I'm just basically along for the ride. So, again I will say it. It's quite possible to work like this, and I'm sure I'm not the only writer who does.