Today’s tip is less of a tip. Well, it’s kind of a tip and kind of a public service announcement. Before I get into, however, I should give the boilerplate warning. Everyone’s creative process is different. How you best express yourself is going to be different than how everyone else does it. The creative process isn’t some rote engineering equation where we can plug ideas and characters into an algorithm and it’ll spit out emotional, thoughtful or exciting stories. Don’t believe the programmers. 

Now, with that out of the way, about 9/10ths of the writing process is editing. 

While you should always be writing, writing and more writing. You should also be editing, editing and doing more editing. 

Now, I may do more editing than some other writers. My creative process begins with an idea. It might be a name for a title. It might be a concept for a character. Sometimes I just think, “Huh, people seem to like trains.” And then I start writing. I have very few plans, goals, directions and never any outlines for how things will develop. My first draft is like a reader’s first read. It’s entirely exploratory and I’m just as shocked and amazed how things end up. 

As you’d expect, this results in a lot of jumbled messes and horrifically convoluted plots. I then take that first draft and I set it against the grindstone. Edit after edit, draft after draft, I refine the original story into something far more presentable, logical, and entertaining. A lot of the time, my first drafts look very little like my final. And there’s far more time spent editing the story than there is writing that initial one. 

I don’t doubt that if you plan everything out ahead of time you can probably save yourself on revisions. But I also don’t believe that no matter how diligent you are in outlining your story, you’re going to have to take it to the grindstone as well. Sometimes our ideas don’t work as well as they do. Sometimes we wander off on tangents. Sometimes we realize there’s a large hole in the narrative and have to go back and plug it up. Mistakes happen. We’re all human and as writers, we thankfully have the luxury to polish our work into something a little more pristine.

Now, I’m never satisfied with my stories. I think they can always be improved. There’s certainly a skill in recognizing where the line is when the amount of revising returns greatly diminished results and you might as well cart it off to the production line. I’m still learning where that is. Usually frustration and exhaustion determine it for me. 

But, keep in mind, while you are writing, writing and writing, you also need to be editing just as much if not more.