Editing your Personal Piece

Some of you may be finished your Personal Piece, others may be finishing it as we speak. I thought that this would be the perfect time to publish some of the ideas I talked to you about rewriting and the personal editing process during last class.

We have discussed how you all have very different ways of writing but not very many of you edit your work.

Here is one way of writing that is comprised of 4 different stages (3 of which are editing stages). The first stage is when you write your piece. Stage 1 is very simple: words on paper. During this stage you are in the "creative"/brainstorming/inspiration mindset. This is where you should just try to write as quickly as possible. Some of you may have planned everything out beforehand, others prefer to write spontaneously. Regardless of your preference, the idea here is to try not to censor your ideas or edit what you are writing.

That comes in the next stage. Yup. Welcome to Stage 2: reading what you have written. During this stage you are reading what you have written critically (but not actually editing yet). So, when you come across something that needs to be changed or does not make sense you mark it and then keep reading. That is the important part. Do not start engaging in the editing process yet. Finish reading your entire piece. Write all over it (I like to print out whatever I have written for Stage 2 and then mark it up with purple pen) but finish reading it, then you are finished with Stage 2.

Which means you are then in Stage 3 which is the brutal phase. This is the full-on editing phase when you have to cut and paste and get rid of the things you love most of all but are not important to the story and everyone else who reads your piece is bored by. Sigh. Stage 3 needs to be engaged in for short periods. This is the time when you may want to "map" your story out. This is also the time when you:

• should be saving your drafts as new documents
• all those beautiful bits you are cutting out, paste them into another document because 2 days later you may find another scene to stick them in so you will want a place where you can reach them easily. Failing that, you will want a sort of graveyard document where you can go and visit them
• spellcheck and grammar check your document (I do not want any unchecked documents handed in)

That is enough about Stage 3. I think you understand what I mean about this phase. Strangely enough, I am always loathe to start it but I love it once I am there.

Stage 4 is the final polishing stage when you make everything look pretty. Make sure that it is formatted properly. Make sure that there are no continuity problems (for example the same character is always the one who says "Yee haw" while the other one has the big sword).

So, those are the 4 stages. I look forward to hearing about your experience of the editing process over the next couple of weeks.