You learn in the editing

“Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear.”

Patricia Fuller

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I’ve read writers who’ve written several books, on one after another. But when you read through them it’s evident they’re stuck making the same mistakes again and again. Why?

Because the learning is in the editing.

On good days writing a great scene is effortless. Other times it’s like pulling ugly knives out of your urethra. Alas, neither of these helps you become a better writer.

It’s like drawing a face. Doing it well enough to complete a gorgeous face or poorly enough that you’re embarrassed to show anyone doesn’t actually help. It’s only when you sit down and work out the difference between the face you drew and one drawn by a truly great artist that you take a step towards becoming a better artist yourself.

It’s the same with writing, only the difference is that after you’ve just written something you’re usually half blind to whether it’s actually good or not. It’s only after a bit of time, and learning, and being critiqued, that you can edit it to make it better and grow as a writer.

It’s in worming out your mistakes and reworking them that you learn your errors, and improve as a writer by inculcating their solutions.

This, unfortunately, sucks.

It feels like like taking a test you thought you got an A* in and wriggling through each answer to work out how you only managed an F-

“While writing is like a joyful release, editing is a prison where the bars are my former intentions and the abusive warden my own neuroticism.”

Tiffany Madison

You’re slamming your head up against your own pointy blades of failure. That’s why so many writers struggle to improve. You end up seeing people who’ve been writing for ten years at the same level as they were in that first year, blaming anything except the fact that they haven’t progressed as a writer.

You’ll see this regurgitated by other writers as well, they’ll tell you “starting books doesn’t help, finishing books does.”

This is because when you finish a story you naturally have to go back and edit it.

Correct the pacing, the structure, the prose and all those tiny things you never even thought were issues until a beta reader comes back to you and says “you use and a lot” and you end up searching through every instance of “and” in all 250 pages of your manuscript, tearing your hair out strand by strand whilst trying to work out which ones are justified.

Then you write the next book, and when you’re you’re about to say “and” you stop yourself. And you figure out whether it’s the right word or just the easiest. Congratulations! You’re improved slightly as a writer. Years upon years of that and you’ll be able to crack out some really good shit.

I can’t wait to read it.