Enhancing has all the time been a basic element of writing in addition to a separate perform, however as self-publishing, on-line and in print, has grow to be ubiquitous, it’s necessary for writers to understand the excellence. A dialogue of the variations can also allow you to affirm the place your power lies.
It’s common for individuals to double up as editors and writers; I’m among the many many who do it. However most individuals really feel more proficient in a single position or the opposite. I’ve written information and have articles and opinion items and different content material for newspapers and different media, in addition to these posts — I’ll have written practically a thousand of them by the top of this 12 months — however though I take pleasure in writing, I really want modifying.
Writing is a proactive course of: Whether or not one is given a subject or comes up with one, writing is an act of creation through which the author calls forth the concept, the scope, the tone, and the construction of the work. Additionally it is a problem, in that it’s the author’s accountability to supply a whole piece of content material. Enhancing, in contrast, is reactive: One is assigned a bit of content material, and one’s process is to refine the author’s effort, serving to her or him obtain the purpose she or he was reaching for. This help could also be minimal, or it might quantity to intermittent or wholesale rewriting, however it’s a response to the preliminary product. The problem, too, lies not in finishing the inventive act however in rigorously, persistently, and completely evaluating and amending the piece.
Writing is, or needs to be, a easily flowing course of; it’s tempting to continuously circle again and polish one’s prose, however probably the most environment friendly process is to supply the entire after which overview it, changing flat phrases with extra vivid ones, reshaping descriptions, and rebuilding phrases, clauses, sentences, and paragraphs.
How does this overview differ from modifying? It doesn’t, apart from a bonus the editor has that’s key to the success of the content material: The author is mostly emotionally invested within the work. It’s his or her thought, or an expression of or a response to a different’s thought, and it typically is marked with the author’s identify. It belongs to the author. The editor, then again, is dispassionate — roughly excited by, maybe even captivated with, the subject, however not possessive. The manuscript is a puzzle to work out. The editor has skilled delight and a need to reinforce the author’s efforts and make the piece the very best that it may be, however that is achieved at an mental take away.
Writers needs to be devoted to cautious crafting of the content material, following guidelines and conventions ranging in complexity from comma placement to narrative group. Editors should be devoted to this process, as a result of though their identify might by no means seem, they’ve been entrusted with the care of the manuscript. Whether or not one is a duplicate editor, attending to the mechanics and the shape, or a developmental editor, shaping and finessing the entire, the author’s brainchild is in a single’s fingers, and that may be a accountability as grave as the author’s cost to supply his or her absolute best work.