Good Writing is Editing: My favorite books and editing tips

I’ve worked as an editor on and off over the last forty years. Writing and editing has always been a huge part of my life. I even met my darling husband in a writer’s group. I’ve worked with poets, academics, novelists, journalists, genealogists, and business-tech writers. And, I’m always shocked at how many people don’t edit their work. In fact, many don’t bother to re-read their first drafts.

If you’ve picked up a pen or tapped prose onto a keyboard, you’ve heard the quote credited to Ernest Hemingway: “Writing is rewriting.” I would alter that quote to be a bit more accurate: “Good writing is editing.”

I am a bit of a zealot about editing and rewriting your work. From an epic tome to a genealogical report to a simple e-mail, your writing says something about you. If you put the time into writing something, why not take the time to make sure it’s polished, that it says exactly what you want it to say? How to begin?

Here are a few tips that work for me:

1. Print it out: Most people write off a computer screen. When you have a draft, print it out. Then take your pencil and start proofing. Why? Because the human eye will see things in a hard paper copy that it will miss on a computer screen. If you feel you just don’t have the time to print things out, at the very least, make a PDF document from your word processing document and edit from that. A shift between digital formats can also shift the eye’s perspective and help you to pick up things you will miss in the original document. A hard copy works best, though.

2. Read it aloud: Read your work out loud. Make sure you are reading exactly what’s on the page, and not what you think should be there. Why read out loud? Because writing is rhythm, and when you read something out loud you hear it. You will hear if the grammar is correct. You will hear if things make sense. You will hear where you missed a word or punctuation. And, most important, you will be able to hear if what you wrote flows well. Does it have rhythm? Is it stagnant and dragging? Mark that draft up, make the changes, and then read it aloud again.

3. Walk away: Once you have your absolute “final” draft, walk away from it. Close the file. Sleep on it. Don’t peek at it for a few minutes, days, or even weeks. Why? Perspective. When you come back to your project you will have fresh eyes and a fresh mind. You will see things you were not able to see from being immersed in the work.

4. Read: Are there writers you admire? Read their work and annotate it as you go. Ask yourself why you like the work? How did this writer get from point A to point B? Can you identify the things that make their work different from, or similar to, other writers? From your own work? This exercise brings an awareness of writing style, as well as mechanics and technique.

5. Practice: Pick up a magazine or newspaper and proofread it. Mark them up with a red pencil as you go. You will find things the proofreader missed. You will find grammar errors and bad prose. Go through old e-mails you’ve written (yes, e-mails). Print them out and edit them. Pull out old writing projects you thought were perfect, take that red pencil and strip them down!

I still do these things all the time. An example: I will finish this post. I will walk away from it, probably overnight. I will print it and read it out loud a couple of times, making changes as I do so. And, knowing me, I’ll read it two weeks after it’s published and wish I’d phrased something differently, or will see a comma where there shouldn’t be one. It’s the nature of the beast: Nothing is ever really finished.

To keep good editing and writing techniques fresh in my mind, I often revisit three tried and true books:

The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White[1]

It’s a classic for a reason. This little book outlines the basics of good writing. I’ve been through four or five copies over the decades.

On Writing Well: An informal guide to writing nonfiction (second edition) by William Zinsser[2]

I couldn’t put this book down when it came out in 1980. My copy is literally worn to tatters. Zinsser reiterates Strunk and White’s basics and offers lessons and examples on how to write clean, clear prose. It’s witty and entertaining to read as well.

On Writing: A memoir of the craft by Stephen King[3]

After the two listed above, this is probably the best book ever written on the craft of writing. It’s fun to read, and offers wonderful lessons on how to write and why you edit. It’s the book that made me a King fan.

All three of these books have a central theme: To be a good writer, take things out, clean up the language, rewrite. In other words: Edit.

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[1] Strunk, William Jr. and White, E.B. The Elements of Style (Third Edition), New York: MacMillan Publishing Co. Inc., 1979.

[2] Zinsser, William, On Writing Well: An informal guide to writing nonfiction (second edition), New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1980.

[3] King, Stephen, On Writing: A memoir of the craft, New York: Simon & Schuster (under the Scribner trademark), 2000.