Editing

This is why I find editing difficult. It used to be that writers would use typewriters and put page numbers at the top or bottom of each page they typed. So, then when you read something you could reference a page number when you went into edit.

However, now if you are writing at a web site like this one there are no natural page number ever (unless you figure some way to usefully do this).

I suppose one way would be to write everything in Word which might be a good idea. In this way you the writer would have everything broken into pages as if you were going to print the pages in your printer.

But that isn't usually what I do. I like to just write whatever I'm going to write and often I will publish something without editing it at all with just reading it through once or twice myself. So, there aren't page numbers on what I write even for myself.

So, this creates the problem that you have no idea where you are at all unless you have Chapters or headings you have created for different sections or have added pictures or things like this to what you have written as reference points.

So, if you have no real reference points when you go back in to edit in any form you have to do something like go up to "edit" and go up to the top and click on that. If you go down to where it says find you click find for a group of words where you want to edit and use that as a reference so you can find that place again. So, keep track of 5 or 10 words that won't be mistaken for another place. Those group of words are your way to find this place in your writings even if you have no other reference points for editing.

Often one is just reading for content and flow the first few times you read through. You are also looking for continuity and to make sure that things are congruent with themselves. For example, if you say someone is 64 and then forget and go back and later (months later) give that person a different age because you actually calculated that they couldn't be that age because of various other factors then at some point you need to choose an age that works in order for what you have written to have congruence with itself. Unless you have chosen to create a completely incongruent piece in the first place.

Then after checking for flow, congruence and continuity I like to check for context and spelling and stuff like this.

However, some people do all this at once and other people have all sorts of exotic systems of editing but most people really hate to edit what they write in the first place like I do.

My experience of editing might be compared to how much a healthy person would not want to be torturing a baby. Because when you write it is like your child and so you want your child to be happy and to make other people as happy as your child makes you. So, editing makes your child miserable usually and I find sometimes I harm what I have written by editing it which also makes me not want to edit what I write.

However, having someone else edit your work is even worse. It is like having your friend whip your children. This is how you likely are going to feel.

For me, writing is a very personal thing like having a child, so finding a way to deal with your child is a very personal individualistic thing that each of us has to find a way to deal with.