Edits As a Form of Self-Abuse

That’s right. I said it.

Editing your own writing can be like a form of self-abuse. Seriously. Stop and think about it. What are you doing when you edit your work? You are sitting there, knowing what you have written needs work. Knowing it isn’t as good as it could be. Knowing you’ve made mistakes. Knowing there are places that fall flat. Knowing, knowing, knowing.

So you have your nitpicking glasses on and your internal editor is fully caffeinated and ready to go.

All you see are your faults sitting on that page. All you do for hours is fix, fix, fix.

And then when you have reached the end, you turn around and go through the manuscript/article/what-have-you and do it again. And maybe even again. And every time you find something that could be better. Something that can be tightened, removed, or fixed.

It’s no wonder that some writers hate their work by the time they are done editing. It’s no wonder they are wondering if this writing thing is really for them. Writing is a part of you. And to pick apart your writing is to pick apart a piece of yourself. Over and over again.

No pressure…

But then… sometimes you surprise yourself. You get to the end and you feel refreshed, inspired, happy, and ready to climb any mountain. Why? Because you rock. You accomplished something. You didn’t just write all that, but you made it EVEN BETTER!

So next time you edit, go easy on yourself. If you are feeling that anvil of self-doubt dangling above your head about to drop at any moment and crush your very being… step back. Take a deep breath. Go do something you enjoy. Refresh your batteries. Write something new. Go for a walk. Then, when you are feeling more hopeful, come back and tackle it again. And for heaven’s sake, don’t try to fix everything in one go. Take several editing passes. The first one for the big stuff, the next one for smaller issues, and the final one for things like punctuation. Otherwise, it will take you forever and you will feel such agony that when your head inevitably crash lands on your keyboard, you won’t be able to lift it again.

So, when editing, be kind to yourself. Take it easy. Otherwise, either your manuscript or your self confidence is going to take a bad beating. And we don’t want that.