Most of us have to edit our own work. Unless you want hand over a small fortune to an editor, you're not likely to send them everything you write (and if your first drafts are anything like mine, you won't want to send them anything resembling a first draft either...)
Editing is quite a different skill from writing, though, and it can be a tricky one to master. Here are two simple but vital ways to make it much easier:
Tip #1: Separate the Different Stages of Editing
"Editing" encompasses several different stages, and it usually works best to keep them separate – especially if you're editing a big, complex project like a novel. These stages are:
Stage #1: Redrafting – this is when you make radical changes to your first draft.
With a novel, this could mean cutting whole chapters, changing around which characters are in which scenes, switching viewpoints about, and even occasionally erasing characters from the story entirely.
With non-fiction, you might be moving chapters around (or cutting them entirely), adding chunks of new material, or reworking the structure of major chapters or sections.
Stage #2: Line-editing – this is when you go through your work paragraph by paragraph and line by line. It's what people often think of as "editing", though it's really just one stage of the process.
With a novel, this could involve rewriting a clunky sentence or paragraph, switching around some words to avoid unintentional repetition, or making a line of dialogue sound more realistic.
With non-fiction, it might include cutting a paragraph that goes off on a tangent, rephrasing something to make it clearer to the reader, or checking a particular fact or statistic that you'd flagged up (while drafting) as something to revisit.
Stage #3: Proofreading – this needs to come last or you risk undoing all your good work by introducing an error as you edit.
Proofreading means making sure that you actually wrote what you think you wrote! Whether you're writing fiction or non-fiction, it's the stage where you catch typos, iron out grammatical errors, and make sure that you're consistent about capitalisation, spellings, and punctuation.
Of course the stages will overlap a little – you might rewrite a chunk of a chapter and fix a clunky sentence or two along the way – but you do need to treat them separately. There's no point line-editing a chapter that you later cut entirely.
Tip #2: Don't Edit Straight Onto the Screen
Ideally, try not to edit on the screen -- particularly if you're working on something long.
When I tackle the redraft of a novel, I normally convert my manuscript into a Kindle document and pop it on my Kindle. Then I curl up with a cup of tea and a lot of chocolate and get busy! I read through, making notes about any big changes needed during the redrafting stage – then I tackle these.
I repeat the manuscript-onto-Kindle process when I line-edit and when I proofread.
The big advantage to this is that it helps separate editing and writing, both in your own head and physically on your work itself. It's easy to end up with an editing mess if you start chopping and changing your manuscript ... and by reading through the whole thing before enacting any of your planned changes, you can get a good sense of the overall flow (or not!) of your work.
When it comes to line-editing and proofreading, many authors find that it's easier to see mistakes or clumsy bits of writing when they're reading on a tablet or on paper, rather than on a computer screen. Even something as simple as changing the font of your manuscript can help.
If you have the time and you can stand it, reading aloud is a brilliant way to spot clunky sentences: you're forced to slow down and you can hear the cadence of your writing.
However you choose to edit, the most important thing is that you do edit! While I absolutely love the first draft stage, with all its exploration and potential, I also really enjoy revising then polishing my work so that it's the best I can make it.
