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Why you should edit your stories
Jan. 19th, 2012 07:52 pmFirst and foremost, it's so you can try and figure out exactly what in the hell you were trying to say. Sometimes, in the vim and vigor of writing, we can get caught up and just sorta put stuff out there on a page. And if you just publish it as-is, you could miss something. You could be reading it over later and actually ask yourself the question of what in the hell did I put there? If you don't have a question, than that is a problem, but it is a fixable problem. Really, even asking the question to begin with is an issue, but it's a fixable issue, because you haven't put out the story for public review yet.
The point of editing and developing your editing skills is to catch these errors and others in the text. Like other forms of artwork, stories communicate something. A feeling, an image, an idea, and if you have moments of confusion, then you're preventing people from getting that feeling, image, idea, whatever. Not editing your story, not removing as many barriers as possible is, I think, an utter failure on the part of writers everywhere.
So edit your damn stories, people.
The point of editing and developing your editing skills is to catch these errors and others in the text. Like other forms of artwork, stories communicate something. A feeling, an image, an idea, and if you have moments of confusion, then you're preventing people from getting that feeling, image, idea, whatever. Not editing your story, not removing as many barriers as possible is, I think, an utter failure on the part of writers everywhere.
So edit your damn stories, people.
