80% of writing is editing
Much of the craft of writing is in editing. Moving from the ill formed hastily translated from Icelandic starting point to the finished product requires several layers of editing, and these editing stages can range from full remodelling of text, deleting sections, or moving them around, to the nitty gritty of revising paragraphs, sentences and word selection.
It is important to have a system of editing which enables you to move, in stages, throughout the complete draft of your paper without stopping. For this stage is fraught with danger. You must not keep re-writing Section 1, however tempting that might be.
As a writer, the editing stage used to be my productivity downfall. I would perfect, over and and again, the introduction and S1 until they were the most beautiful things on earth. I would avoid difficult sections (say 2 and 3) and keep on editing, printing and reading S1. By the time I faced up to editing S2 and 3, I had wasted so much time moving words around in S1, that my efficiency had plummeted. I had also forgotten what these sections were really about. This is not the way to edit.
How to edit
Editing first requires you to read the whole paper. Without a pen. It is a very hard thing to do. Once you have read it, and have the sense of it, you can re-read with a pen, making check marks where you see errors, but not amending the paper. On the third read through, you take a pad of paper and write down everything that needs doing to address that checkpoint - here you are creating an editing list.
This may seem like an endless waste of time. Why make lists when I could jump straight in and do the thing? But it has many advantages. You don’t constantly fiddle with one section as everything gets equal amount of energy. Second, you are creating a long and involved task list which means you can jump in and out of your text, anywhere, anytime. This helps you move from Newport’s rhythmic scheduling to journalistic writing. You can sit down for 15 minutes and check off a couple of edits to your text because you have done the thinking in the list making stage. If you try to edit as you go along without a list, you will forever be re-reading the chapter to remember what you had intended to do.
In my experience, this technique ensures you need less revisions. You are not constantly printing out fresh versions when you have only corrected a small amount of the text.
TODAY I WILL…
Write (or edit) for 2 hours minimum working methodically down my list;
Commit to trying this editing technique!