The majority of my work today has involved editing. I’m slowly starting to enjoy the editing process way more than I used to. Now that it’s something that I’m studying part-time my appreciation for it is going up.
I love how one move can change the meaning, how every detail can mean something bigger, how every step is like a puzzle piece. I loved that feeling of my own work looking a hundred times than it before. I also love editing other peoples’ work.
I started off the first unit of my editing course on a not so great note. Why? Because it was extremely challenging, and I was just starting to get back into a routine of being a part-time student, and also juggling other aspects of my life as well. Editing courses are based on this principle that the approach will likely vary based on the writer’s voice and the typical tone for the publication. What fascinates me about editing is the same thing that fascinates me about theatre directing: the editor is basically shaping every aspect of someone’s work like clay.
Today I revised an article that I wrote on how editing apps affect the writing process. I’m really proud of my progress thus far. I provide some really great tips that readers will likely find extremely helpful. There’s a meta aspect to my article: I used an editing app. It was my personal favourite: The Hemingway App. I love its focus on simplification. I often catch myself editing people’s work the Hemingway way. In other words: it involves trimming a lot of fat, and word counts often get cut in half.
In my final creative writing course of my undergrad, I was really tough on my peers. It was a workshop phase of the course so we took turns getting feedback on our work. I’m amazed it didn’t make me unpopular with my peers. I guess they were grateful that I was tough on them? I’m quiet and softspoken in large groups but this was a situation where I couldn’t shut up. When I was quiet for a while people thought something was wrong. They expected me to be critical. They also expected me to have something insightful to say. That got tiring after a while, but it was worth it. I think it also awakened my ambition to help people with their writing.
A long time ago I had a really hard time learning how to read and write. Surprising right? Well not really. I always acknowledge that struggle that I overcame a long time ago as an important source of motivation for everything I write. All you have to do is check out my website’s about page to find out more about my writing process.
Last week I had one or two “freelance fail days.”I was massively burnt out from my heavy workload and that caused me to not go out much.Thus far, I feel much better and energized enough to take on anything.
