Writing Tip – Don’t Edit Too Soon

[Stephen Puleo]

At my live events and via email or social media, I get many questions about the writing process, and requests for writing tips.  So, from time to time I’ll include writing tips in this space.  Here’s one: I always tell young or new writers to leave plenty of time between when they WRITE and when they EDIT.  These are two very distinct actions and should be kept separate.  If you write something on a Monday afternoon, try to delay editing until at least Wednesday or Thursday.  If you do this, you will find one of two things happens: 1.) you will really like what you’ve written (in which case it’s probably really good); or more likely, 2.) you will read what you’ve written and say: I can’t believe I wrote this – it needs so much work!  The benefit of time between – in this example – Monday writing and, say, Thursday editing provides this perspective.  It is very difficult to write something on a Monday morning and do an honest, “hard edit” on that piece of writing on Monday afternoon.  Not saying there aren’t times when we are forced to do it because of a time crunch, but it isn’t optimal.  Try to leave as much time as possible between writing and editing.

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