The Thrill of Editing
Yes, *thrill*!
There are so many stages to writing a novel but I stand by my belief that one of the most pleasing is printing out your manuscript and editing it on paper. Quite apart from anything else, it’s just lovely not looking at a screen for once. There’s something so soothing about finally leafing through pages, instead of typing, scrolling and staring at a blinking cursor. It’s a relief to no longer be gazing at a blank page and to have sentences and paragraphs to sculpt and shape. Holding your pages in your hand and seeing your work actually start to look like a book is immensely satisfying too. It’s confirmation that all of that tenacity is paying off.
There’s a mistaken belief that books come out fully formed but once you start to write, you realise that is absolutely not the case. You have to learn to trust the process, to hold your nerve and to ignore your inner perfectionist. All while holding the complexity of multiple scenes and storylines in your head. And once you do all of that, it becomes abundantly clear that at least 50% (if not a lot more) of writing is, in fact, editing. You have to ‘kill your darlings’ and put the story and your characters’ experiences above everything else.
The funny thing is that once you accept all of this, editing becomes rather thrilling. And that’s why I love this ‘on paper’ stage. It signals that things are about to get really interesting.
I enjoy so many things about this part of the process. Not least sitting in lovely cafes without the glare of a laptop. Instead I’ve got a pile of papers clipped together with a gold bulldog clip and a freshly sharpened Blackwing pencil ready to make notes. I order a pretty coffee and settle in. I feel like a writer. Yes, I like to romanticise my life because, why not? After all, being a writer is what I’ve always dreamt of and here I am, living that dream.
With the pages in your hands, you can flick backwards and forwards easily and look at pages side by side to check plot points and consistency without scrolling up and down and forgetting what you’re looking for by the time you get there. Working on paper somehow makes me slow down. I can read the words as if I’m a reader, rather than a writer. I can sense if the pace and poetry of the sentences feels right. My mind just seems to connect to the story in a different way. Maybe there’s a scientific or neurological reason for this, who knows? I just know that it feels so different to the screen and this renewed perspective on the story sometimes provides breakthroughs and clarity about plot points or character traits that might not have occurred to me otherwise.
And yes, I am ‘of a certain age’ where working on paper feels nostalgic. There’s the hazy memory of writing essays by hand at school, of a slower pace of life, of the freedom we all had when we were younger, before work and responsibilities and life kicked in. We used to write letters and scribble in the margins of texts we were studying. I may have rose-tinted glasses when I think about it but sitting in a cafe scribbling brings me back to those times.
When I finally take the manuscript back to my laptop, to update the document on screen, I flick through and reassess each change before committing to it. I feel refreshed from the change of scenery and giddy about the fact that I’m one step closer to publication. So yes, editing isn’t so bad after all. In fact, I sometimes think it’s one of the best bits.
How about you?
