How Do You Self-Edit Your Writing?

Normally I don’t talk about self-editing because what you really need to do is hire an editor.

However…

If you’re a ghostwriter (like me), you have to do a lot of self-editing.

If you’re a newbie writer who can’t afford a top-notch editor, you’re probably trying to do it yourself. Let’s not pretend otherwise. Most writers think they can be their own editors at first (self included).

So here’s 3 ways to make it easier/more effective:

Read it aloud.

You might find what looked good on paper isn’t actually good. This helps you break up run-on thoughts and pinpoint where a sentence might be unclear.

This one trick has helped me find so many embarrassing tupos typos.

It’s helped me find unnecessary repetition (and redundancies).

And it’s helped me find sentences which were too long and needed to be broken up because the point was getting lost in all the additional words and phrases which only fluffed the sentence for no reason at all.

Alright, I know I’m being a bit facetious, but I’m also being serious.

Because, most importantly, it’s helped me save time in the editing process. I can spend an hour rewriting the same sentence, swapping out words…or I can spend ten seconds to hear it out loud and feel confident about the words I’ve chosen.

Give it a rest.

Don’t edit right away. Take a day or two to work on other projects so you can approach it with the eyes of a reader, not a writer. Every writer makes this mistake at one point or another. Even the pros. I constantly chastise myself for editing a paragraph right after I write it instead of continuing on.

Write first. Edit later. Always always always.

This is also why you should never go from typing “The End” to hitting “Publish.” When I got the first copies of my novel delivered, I found about 3 typos within 5 minutes. Should’ve waited a bit longer.

Focus on trimming.

With each sentence, ask yourself, “Is this the simplest, shortest way I can say this without losing the voice?” 9 times out of 10, you’ll find excess to take out. Seriously.

If you discover you’re NOT shortening 9 out of 10 sentences on your first editing pass, then I can guarantee you’re not doing it right. Start over.

A good metric to follow is reducing your total word count per section/chapter by 5 to 10%. Sometimes this will hurt a bit, but in the end, you’ll be glad you did.

Writing and editing are two very different skills. It’s rare to be the type of person who can do both.

If you need notes on your current project to see if you’re headed the right direction, but can’t hire an editor for the entire project, then consider sending me the first 10 pages. I’d love to give you 10 notes back on how to improve your next draft.