I wrote a post a few months ago about my self-editing process. I tend to make changes and edits as I write, which results in a highly polished, but slow to produce, first draft. I’ve noticed lately, however, that my writing has been progressing even slower (for multiple reasons), but one important reason is that I’ve gotten a bit bogged down in the editing and polishing as I’m writing.

I am also a very verbose writer. My current WIP (and my favorite genre) is epic fantasy, which by definition is long—but I really love words and descriptions, and sometimes I just have too many words in my manuscript. One of the things that I do when I’m self-editing as I write is look for places where I can tighten up a sentence or a paragraph. That’s also one of the biggest things I ask my editor to help with—tightening up and trimming down.

I know that many writers have the opposite problem—after their first draft, they have to go back through and add descriptions, tags, modifiers, explanations. This blog post is not for you (sorry!). This is for the folks like me who put in way too much in the way of descriptions, tags, modifiers, and explanations.

In your first, rough, draft, don’t worry about word count or tight writing. Get it all out. Do all the things you’re not supposed to do: write the long infodumps, give characters repetitive conversations, write detailed scenes that don’t actually move the story forward at all. It’s a first draft, it’s ok.

Whether you edit as you go, or you go back and do a full second draft, the editing process is the time for downsizing. I moved a few months ago, and I moved into a much smaller space. I’d lived in my larger house for almost nine years, so I’d accumulated a lot of stuff. Once I started the sorting and packing process, I found many things were easy to get rid of—just random junk that I’d kept because it fit in the space that I had, but I had no real attachment to it. When you embrace editing mode, this first level of “downsizing” frequently is easy, obvious, and satisfying once you get into it. It’s cutting out those repetitious conversations between characters and keeping just the more important or best-written one. It’s realizing that these two slow moving scenes could be shaved down and combined with a third scene, keeping the best bits but also still moving the story forward. It’s realizing that a lot of the words in your manuscript are there just because there was space on the page, not beceause you love them or they’re needed.

The next stage of downsizing can be a bit harder. After I’d made a few trips to the dump and the thrift store with the easy-to-part-with stuff from my house, I realized that I still had way too much stuff. A lot more downsizing was needed. This is the part where I had to look at every book, knick-knack, piece of clothing or furniture, and useful doodad in the kitchen junk drawer, and decide if I REALLY needed or wanted it. And if I did want it or think I needed it, would it fit in my new house along with all the other things I’d decided that I really needed?

This downsizing stage of the editing process is where it’s helpful to get outside advice. A lot can be done with intentional self-editing, but at some point, another set of eyes (or several) is needed. Whether it’s critique partners or a professional editor (or, ideally, both), other people can help you cut out the extra stuff that you think you still want or needed in the story. I had a little of that sort of help when I moved—family members helping me pack occasionally asked if I was keeping something or why I was keeping it. In writing, it’s even more important to have someone else asking you the hard questions. Critique partners, beta readers, and editors can see your book in a way you can’t, because they’re just reading it, not creating it. They can help you downsize in ways and places that you didn’t even know needed downsizing.

No writing method is perfect or foolproof—not even the best, highly refined, unique method that works for you. Having a method and a process is good, but sometimes that process needs tweaking or adjusting, especially if you have fallen into a not-so-great habit. Having a support system (whether it’s a class or writing mentor, or just one close friend who’s not afraid of telling you the truth) is vital when your self-editing has run out and you need help. Writing is an organic process of always learning and growing, which is part of what makes it fun. So have fun with your downsizing!

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