Editing is an important skill in every media area. Whether you’re planning for on-air content, updating your station or ministry website, sending out funding letters or even internal and external communications and newsletters, you are writing!
Want to step up your game? Start with self-editing.
Let’s be clear that having to edit your work doesn’t mean you’re a bad writer! First writing drafts are rarely ready for print. Professional authors go through several editing rounds before their works are released.
Editing is simply part of the process of developing what you want to say and how you want to say it in the best way.
Yes, ideally, it’s helpful to have someone else read your work and give you feedback. But learning to edit your own writing is a highly desirable skill for two reasons: First, no one else may be available to read what you wrote right now. If you’ve got a quick deadline and everyone’s busy, it’s up to you to make sure what you wrote is ready for your reader. Secondly, even if someone else is available and willing to read it for you, it’s helpful to make sure it’s as close to final as possible so he or she isn’t spending unnecessary time and effort on extensive edits.
But editing your own work is hard.
It’s not the most natural thing in the world for you to edit something you wrote. We are often blind to our own flaws. Additionally, it’s hard to get outside of your own head to determine whether what you wrote will make sense to someone else.
Unintentionally garbled communication is a problem that dates back to the Tower of Babel! If this sounds like you, here are tips to help you edit your own work.
- Walk Away. If you’re up against a tight deadline, this may not be possible. In that case, skip this tip and move on to the next one. But if you have the time, it can be helpful to give your mind a rest from what you wrote so you can come back and look at it with fresh eyes. This doesn’t have to involve a long span of time—a quick coffee break or chat with a co-worker at the water cooler is enough. And you don’t even have to literally walk away either. Simply working on something else for a short time will help you to switch gears before coming back to edit.
- Read it Aloud.The biggest obstacle in learning to edit your own work is learning to spot the flaws. Even seemingly obvious spelling errors can become invisible, since your brain knows what you meant to communicate and the brain fills in the gaps as you read. Reading your work out loud forces you to slow down and seeevery word as you say it. Additionally, hearing yourself say what you wrote will better let you hearany awkward phrasing or wording that could be improved.
- Use a thesaurus. If you find yourself using the same words over and over again, or if the words you’ve chosen aren’t quite conveying your meaning, go to thesaurus.com or some other synonym-finder to find just the right word.
- Use dynamic verbs.A good way to spruce up your writing is to replace common, stale verbs (like sit, walk, or say) with verbs that really describe the action (such as plop, saunter, or declare). Again, a thesaurus is your friend here.
- Avoid homophone mix-ups.Words like they’re, there, and their are easy to confuse with one another if you’re not paying attention, especially if you’re up against a tight deadline. If you already struggle with swapping similar sounds, keep a list handy of the problem words and which ones to use where. When you’re reading through your work, circle or highlight all the places you use a homophone, and then double check each one to make sure it’s in the right spot.
- Kill your darlings.This phrase may sound unnecessarily violent, but it’s popular in writing circles because it conveys an important concept. Many times you’ll find you’ve come up with a brilliant sentence, paragraph, or idea, only to later find that it just doesn’t fit with the final product. Cut it, even if it’s on a tweetable level. If you find yourself hovering over the delete button because it is just so good, cut and paste the selection into another document to save for another purpose.
- Know when to quit. Even though you want your communication to be as good as it can be, make sure to prioritize when it comes to how much time you spend editing. This may be easy for some people, but if you’re prone to perfectionism, it can be tempting to agonize over just the right phrasing and rewrite over and over. If this is you, ask yourself what the consequences will be if you use your writing as is. If the stakes are relatively low, set yourself a time limit and then stick to it.
These tips aren’t rigid rules for all editing. They’re meant to make things easier for you, so if one doesn’t work for you, skip it. Like most things in life, editing your own writing will take practice and patience before you become more comfortable with it, so give yourself grace as you develop this skill.
