Our eyes are deceptive
little buggers. They often see things for what they should be, not what they
are. I learned this the hard way, after spending hour after hour, day after day
working on a novel. I’d already learned years before that you never edit as you
write. My new approach was to write it, and then immediately go to the
beginning and start the editing process. After working my way to the end, I was
satisfied that I’d found all the mistakes. Then time passed, and I decided to
read the story. I was blown away to find that there were still mistakes hidden
among all those words. So as it turned out, my new approach was wrong too. I
then had to figure out why. Why wasn’t I catching all my mistakes? What was I
doing wrong?
For my next novel, I
decided to try something different. I wrote it, making notes of anything I
needed to change during edits, and then I walked away from it. I worked on
other projects, piddled around the house, whatever I wanted to do. But I didn’t
as much as think about that novel for months. Then, I was ready. I tackled that
sucker, and was absolutely amazed at how much easier it was to edit after I’d
distanced myself from it. The words were fresh, and therefore it was easy to
spot mistakes. Enough time had passed that my eyes didn’t see what should’ve been there, there saw what was (or wasn’t) there. It was an amazing
moment for me to realize that this is
the way it should be done. This was
the secret. Write it, walk away. Edit, walk away again. Edit one more time,
just to be sure.
Distancing yourself from
your work ensures that you will find more of your mistakes. To find even more,
read your work aloud as you edit. It’s harder for your eyes to trick you if
they have to relay messages to your mouth. Your mouth will rat them out if
they’re lying.
Find out more Kimberly here.
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