SHEDDING THE UGLY MASK FROM SELF-EDITING

Daily, I hear writers gripe about self-editing. You just don’t want to do it. And why is that?

Because you’re looking at self-editing through an ugly mask.

But if you peel away just one layer of that mask at a time and look at the true face of self-editing, you just might start looking forward to it. Really!

I remember sitting in ninth-grade math class, first semester, and all while the teacher spoke, I sat in the back of the room repeating over and over to myself, “I hate math, I don’t want to do it, I don’t want to learn it, and I’m not going to.” Needless to say, I got a big fat F that semester, and I sincerely doubt any of you want to see one or two-star reviews on your books simply because you didn’t want to do the work.

And that’s the first layer of the self-editing ugly mask: you just don’t want to put in the time and effort to do something you see as either unnecessary or not enjoyable. Am I right?

But just think about how much better your story becomes once you put in a little brain wattage. The improvement is often astounding, and more than worth it. You'll be so proud of yourself that you might think again the next time you sneer at self-editing.

After all, self-editing is polishing. It’s about making all the tears, sweat, and frustration of your hard work positively shine! It’s about adding the spice to your chili, the Bailey’s to your coffee, or the marshmallows to your hot chocolate.

The second layer of that ugly mask is whatever you see as your weak point. Like grammar and punctuation corrections, for instance. If I had a dollar for every writer who said, “Punctuation and grammar are my weak points,” I’d be on a permanent vacation. Or maybe you believe your weak point is dialogue or description. Maybe it’s action/fight scenes, emotion, body language, plot, or character development.

Whatever you see as your weak point or an area where you feel you need improvement, you just don’t want to deal with it, and I get it. (Remember the math class I mentioned?)

But here's the thing: the more you practice, the stronger those weak points will get until you no longer see them as weak links at all.

I adore self-editing now because the results are so incredibly satisfying, and you can feel the same. With just a few hours of effort at a time, once you get through that entire draft, you’ll go from feeling good about your story (and your writing) to feeling great!

And there’s another advantage too. Practice makes perfect, right? (Well, as near to perfect as a human can get, anyway.) It really does!

So, whatever your weakness might be, every time you go over your work, you’re honing those writing skills and turning that weakness into a strength.

So don’t be a lazy writer or a weakling. Pump that iron…er…paper? Keys?

My point is: work that brain of yours. Improve your story and improve your writing skills at the same time. Before you know it, you’ll be looking at self-editing without the ugly.

So take the time. You won’t be sorry, I promise you. You’ll be ecstatic!