Polishing Your Work

by Bill Watson

Once you’ve chosen a subject to write about, the writing itself is usually the easy part of the process. You’ll spend the bulk of your time on rewriting- cleaning up the copy you’ve just written until it’s as readable as you can make it.

As a writer, unless you’re self-publishing the piece, you’re not expected to edit to the “publishable as-is” stage, a professional editor will normally do that. You are, however, expected to turn in very readable copy that’s free of misspellings and confusing sentences. If you’re not sure of how to begin the rewriting process, here are some tips that should help.

1. Good writing is tight writing. Scan your manuscript for unnecessary words. That is a word almost everyone overuses. If you can drop it and the sentence still makes sense- remove it. Also, it often takes a writer a while to really get into the writing process; your work may read better if you completely drop your first paragraph or two.

2. Spell check everything. Don’t assume you know how to spell complicated words because your confidence will inevitably lead to errors. By the same token, don’t rely only on your computer spell checker or some mistakes will slip through. It will not catch the fact that you used the word your in place of you’re, for example. Sometimes your misspelling will accidentally be the correct spelling of some other word and will also be overlooked.

3. Try your best to get punctuation correct but don’t slave over it, that’s what editors are for.

4. Avoid proofing your own work. A good test is to have a friend read it, pointing out sections that are confusing to them. In lieu of that, set your piece aside for a few days and proof it very slowly, you'll be amazed at the number of mistakes you'll discover once you've distanced yourself from the work a bit.

5. Replace redundancies with fresh words. As I wrote these tips, the word “writing” came up often. I substituted article, work, piece, copy and similar words to avoid using the same word repeatedly.

6. Identify boring spots in your writing and try to enhance them with a bit of cleverness, a quote or an anecdote; after all, "You have nothing to fear but fear itself." Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1932. See how effective it is? It works even better when the quote actually relates in some way to the subject matter that preceded it. What really fascinates me though is: Did you ever notice people only use old Franklin's quote when they're about to be wiped out by poverty or they're in a battle preparing to charge into nearly certain death? No one ever says it when it really is safe. I mean, when was the last time you were sitting on the couch and your significant other suddenly blurted out "The only thing you have to fear is fear itself"? It doesn't happen. But it would make sense to say it then because it really is safe.

7. You can't overdo it! There have been occasions when I’ve rewritten a manuscript seven or eight times. Some book writers rewrite each page as many as twelve times.

By no means is this a complete list, but it should cover enough ground to help you understand the basic process of fine-tuning a rough draft into a prefessional...ummm..prefeshunal....ok...prufeshunal piece of writing. (I new I'd get it rite sooner or later.)