The Editing Rant of a Mad Writer

The editing process is by far my least favorite part of writing. It seems like it takes forever. I don’t like to wait for things, I just want it done. I’m very impatient and yet I’m also a procrastinator. Therefore I’m in a big hurry to do nothing. It takes a lot of patience to go through edits.

They can become very worrisome when all you’re doing is correcting errors. It’s mostly little things as well. A comma here, a comma there. You’re typing too fast and you use to instead of too or two. Then you got they’re, there and their. Can’t we just agree to use theiyr’re? It would make life so much easier and we, as readers, could easily use context clues to figure out which there, the writer means. Let’s use there in a sentence real quick. They’re in their house over there. How many there’s does one truly need? By the way, wouldn’t it be brutal to use that sentence in a spelling bee for there? It would be funny as hell, but still brutal.

Enough about the silly little there’s. What about the other dumb spelling errors? You’re trying to spell one word and it comes out completely different and you don’t catch it in your initial edit. You then send it off to your editor and they must think you an idiot when they see off instead of the word of. Making it Jack off Hearts. It’s the little things that drive me crazy.

Missing words makes me want dive off a cliff. Funny thing is, I know what I just said back there and when I’m editing my own work it will be missed as well. Why is it that we do this? We know what we’re trying to say so we just add the missing word in where it’s needed without thinking about it as we’re reading. However, missing the wrong word or punctuation, can change the sentence entirely. Do I really need to remind you about Uncle Jack and his horse? I think you get my point.

Editing is my least favorite part about writing. However, editing is just as, if not more, important than the actual story itself. Editing can make or break any story. If you have bad editing, you will have a bad story. It’s easy to just edit it yourself and move on to publishing, but what does that really do for you? Next to nothing. Editing needs to be done. Don’t expect Microsoft Word to find all of your mistakes for you. Your story could be spectacular, but most readers won’t read something littered with more errors than my three year old writing about her day at the park.  Get an editor. I have the luxury of having two editors to help me out. Both are willing to do the work pro-bono. I couldn’t do this without them. Chances are you have a friend or two that can help you with this. If you don’t have this luxury, there are always pay services. Book Fuel has an editor service, and so does Create Space. Find something and use it.  

I appreciate you reading my rant about editing. Tell me what your least favorite part of writing is in the comments below.