by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: July 16, 2010

It is amazing when a writing session ends with satisfaction that comes from a job well done. It is equally amazing when the writing is reviewed a day or even a few minutes later! The writer is often compelled to ask "What on Earth was I thinking?"

The first draft of anything is bound to be fraught with errors, invisible typos, illogical trains of thought and other problems. Even the best of writers will go back to something that was written a while ago and will find all sorts of wrong that must be righted! As a result, it is not necessarily the writing that requires our best efforts; it is the editing that requires our best efforts.

When self editing, it takes an approach that is merciless, internally objective and highly self critical. This approach can be difficult when there is a main theme, a thought, an opinion or a logic that cannot be broken down or reconstructed with ease. But at minimum, there must be a search for poorly used words, conflicting statements, confusing or poor transitions and other flaws that cannot be caught by the grammar and spell checkers.

If there is the slightest doubt or instinctive feeling that the facts are not right, there must be deeper research and more questioning of the sources and references. If the topic is not that well understood, then the difficult choice must be made to abandon or to delay publishing until the concepts can be better researched, incorporated into the mind, understood and then communicated.

An objective outside editor can point out flaws and faults from a completely different perspective: that of the highly qualified and critical reader. If the targeted reader is not getting the concepts or ideas, then those concepts and ideas have not been well communicated. It is not a matter of agreeing with opinion, but is a matter of having a clear understanding of the opinion that is being expressed! That is why an outside editor must be an objective editor who does not try to change opinion, but who looks for clarity and presentation of ideas and thoughts.

The most difficult part of working with an outside editor lies in the subjective aspects of writing. If there is not a meeting of the minds about the genre, the theme, the artistry, the idea or the statements that are being made, then it will be difficult to accept editor's inputs that are so far away from the writer's goals in doing the work. Some editors know what sells. Others know what is artistically superior. Others are good technicians who focus more on correctness than on content. Taking care to define the editing goals and to find the right editor is an important part of getting qualified help.

Of course, if the writing is for pay, is technical or is heavily supervised, than the writer must be open to all kinds of input, some of which is utter nonsense. One "editor" might call the writing too full of embellishment. The next person up the chain might call the corrected work too terse. The final correction might be a simple matter of resubmitting the original document that finally is accepted and praised. (This actually happened in a technical writing situation.)

In these situations, it is best to listen carefully, to make the required changes and to continue making them until the ultimate responsible party is satisfied. In other words, with paid and supervised writing, wherever it is that the buck stops, then the editing stops.

In summary, these are some of the considerations to think of when self editing, when voluntarily working with an outside editor and when writing under one or more editors in a chain.

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