Topic: Editing

10-second review: When should you edit?

Title: “Novel-Writing Insight for Beginners” (Review of A Novel In a Year: From First Page to Last in 52Weeks by Louise Doughty. HarperCollins, 272 pages). Chuck Leddy. The Writer (May 2009), 43. The Writer is a magazine written by writers for writers.

Summary/Quote: “Doughty is also a strong believer in editing as you go. She urges would-be novelists to begin each day by editing the previous day’s work. ‘If you can get in the habit of ‘editing as you go,’ it will save you an awful lot of time later,’ she says.”

Comment: At first, I thought ‘editing as you go’ meant line by line while writing. My experience is that that kind of editing keeps me from writing. But if I had used this technique of editing the previous day’s writing, I would not have fallen into the trap of having to edit the whole book I was writing under pressure to publish, causing me to overlook detailed editing, with subsequent mistakes in my self-published book. What the author is recommending is editing in chunks every day, much more manageable. Ouch! I wish I had known that. RayS.