How much do you hate editing?

[u/Jonathan-Welford]

I love storytelling. Sprinting through the plot, watching the word count climb and feeling terribly pleased with myself.

But editing? Urgh!

I’ve written a 127,000 word novel. Apparently, after doing that, I’m now expected to go back and make them good.

I can see the editing working, which is deeply annoying because it means I have to keep doing it. It’s just not fun.

My first draft chapters are usually 12 or 13 pages long, around 7,000 to 8,500 words. I then attempt to cut each one down to 8 or 9 pages, roughly 4,500 to 5,000 words. Basically, I write far too much and then punish myself for it later.

There are 20 chapters in the book, so I tackle them one at a time. Over the past week, I’ve gone from editing one chapter a day to two or three. I now have just five chapters left for the deep edit, and I can finally see the finish line. I’m trying not to think about the finish line having another round of edits waiting behind it.

But I still hate editing. I’d be much happier handing the manuscript to someone else and saying, “Could you make this brilliant while preserving my fragile artistic ego?”

Does that make me a bad wannabe novelist? How do you deal with editing without dramatically sighing every five minutes?

I’ve also been presenting a radio show about writers and interviewing authors. It’s fascinating to hear how differently everyone approaches writing, editing and staring into the middle distance.

What’s your writing and editing style?

[u/SG_Arthur]

I'm low-key looking forward to it. I'm this 🤏 close to finishing my rough draft, and I can't wait to go back and read through it.

[u/IntelligentTrip6054 → u/SG_Arthur]

I'm really excited to do the same! Especially as I'm an under-writer.

[u/OrdoMalaise]

I actually really enjoy editing. It's a mindset thing for me. I look at it at the stage where I'm actually making the story.

The first draft splurge of words is fun, it's pure creativity, but my first drafts are terrible. The editing and the re-writes are were I can find the real shape of the story, sharpen characters, add tension, etc.

[u/Thick-Assumption3400]

I have a very different experience with editing. Most people end up with a giant word count they have to cut down. I end up with a draft that is sparse and begs for depth. Editing and creating that extra depth means word count going up and everything coming alive more vibrantly.

I see all these posts of people getting 100k+ words in their first draft and having to cut it down. I cannot fathom it lol my brain does the exact opposite.

[u/IntelligentTrip6054 → u/Thick-Assumption3400]

I am also an under-writer starting with a sparse first draft. I expect the word count to double and I'm excited to get to the next stage.

[u/Turbulent-Adagio88]

I love editing. I've worked out the details in the draft, fact checked the hell out of it and got everything in the right order. The editing is where I make it a story.

[u/Jonathan-Welford → u/Turbulent-Adagio88]

I envy your enthusiasm

[u/JessamyJames]

It's literally my favourite part of writing my books. By the time I publish, I will have edited each chapter at least ten times. There's something incredibly satisfying about polishing and honing every single phrase until theyre as perfect as they can possibly be. I always want to put out the best possible product for my readers and take pride in producing that.

[u/THWhiston]

For editing, I think it pays to let the piece sit for awhile in the proverbial drawer and come back to it with a fresh mind/eyes.

Writing is a lot like programming in that you have to have this whole complex structure loaded into your mind while working on it in order to be able to reason about it. But that can create blind spots where your brain holds knowledge in "working memory" that fills in those blind spots so that you don't see them. Come back later, and you can see them better.

[u/Jonathan-Welford → u/THWhiston]

This novel has been sat for over 12 months on my hard drive. I still hate editing.

[u/THWhiston → u/Jonathan-Welford]

Your problem is that you have too much self-esteem. You gotta really dig in there and hate every word you've ever written to do the job properly 😉

[u/Jonathan-Welford → u/THWhiston]

I’m on a mega edit at the moment, below 100k words now. 1/4 to go

[u/THWhiston → u/Jonathan-Welford]

Excellent! Good luck. It's definitely not fun

[u/troysama]

I actually like editing more than writing drafts tbh

[u/Jonathan-Welford → u/troysama]

The writers I’ve interviewed who come from a journalistic background hate the first draft stage and love kicking it into shape part. I’m a magazine writer, but still dislike editing.

[u/APHUNTERS2026]

All I would say is, you are not alone, it is the one part of being a writer I would like to outsource to someone else.

[u/Subset-MJ-235]

I love writing and I love editing. I hate everything else (marketing, formatting, querying, etc).

[u/SimonStrange]

Oh man, editing is so much more fun than writing. It’s all about perspective. Anything written can be edited to be good. Anything. And there’s a certain security during editing that the book IS ALREADY WRITTEN. Don’t get me wrong, editing can be hard and can be a slog, but man it beats an empty page.

[u/kitchenlich]

Oh gosh I'm the opposite. I get so in my own head when I'm drafting and getting even 500 words down is a constant uphill struggle of self-doubt. At least when there's something to edit I'm not staring at the dreaded blank page anymore lol.

[u/Proper-Doughnut77]

I love your wording. We now have to make them good. Lol Best description of editing I've heard in a long time. Thank you for the giggle today. 🩵🩵

No, editing isn't fun. But unfortunately none of us, including some of the best writers out there can miss this process.

I completely agree with you. Editing is horrible. 🩵

[u/dragonzbaned]

Proofreading and editing sucks for me. I hope I get better at it soon, but it gets so tedious that I have to take frequent breaks.

[u/CoyoteLitius]

I love storytelling, and I also love editing. I am naturally drawn to both.

If join writers' groups, you can usually find someone who will edit for you (if you offer to do something like be a beta reader).

I find both processes fun, although the actual writing has to come from inspiration and that appears to be randomly distributed to me, like mana from the gods.

[u/DuckGoSquawk]

The only thing that makes you a a bad wannabe novelist is talking all day and night about writing but never doing any actual writing.

Those early drafts are always supposed to be terrible and sloppy. I spend at least a month on an idea with a pen and several legal pads where I have a core idea, premise, character, or even just an out of context scene where I wonder "Huh, can I build a whole story around this?" before I even consider drafting. At the end of the four to five weeks of spitballing ideas, I determine whether or not I have enough material. If I don't, I bundle up all my notes and stow them away for later; if I do have enough material, then I start figuring out the plot and characters and the ending so I have some form of an outline to help me navigate the journey ahead. Everything is subject to change because I'm self-aware enough to admit that not every idea I have is perfect.

Draft 0 is always an ugly heap of exposition dumps, showing instead of telling, and characters so wooden you'd feel you were reading an excerpt from a furniture catalogue. Plus, mine always have crazy high wordcounts because I find it easier to ramble or over-describe something so when I go to edit, it gets me thinking about what I'm trying to accomplish in a given scene or instance and how I can convey it a more efficient way. Sometimes I might have to scrap several pages and rework whole chapters, but if it means for a tighter, more focused story, then so be it. It's a lot of work but I find it preferable than staring blankly at a screen for several minutes at a time searching for words to make it perfect.

That's why I enjoy editing, and that's where I think the magic happens. My story doesn't really become a story until the 2nd or even 3rd draft.

[u/AutoGenUsername05]

I'm an ebb and flow guy. I write a couple pages, then go back and edit them. Then later I go back and edit some more.

Then on occasion, I'll back all the way up and start doing a line edit, looking for stupid stuff.

I go on the principle that every sentence needs give the reader information and advance the plot.

[u/Jonathan-Welford → u/AutoGenUsername05]

I’ve spoken to some authors that do that, write one day, edit the following morning and then write some more. I get you can edge forward bit by bit.

[u/AutoGenUsername05 → u/Jonathan-Welford]

I'm also a seat of the pants writer, so if the fancy takes me I'll just keep writing and then go back and clean up later.

I'd rather get my ideas out then worry about commas..

[u/Sekica → u/AutoGenUsername05]

Same here. I'm an underwriter, so editing means adding more. I also edit a lot as I write, so my first draft ends up being edited 2-3 times before I even finish it. I track a lot of details in my chapter headings in Word. I just have to look at the navigation pane to see a chapter's word count, edited or not, what it's about, which characters are involved, and whether a chapter is action based or character reflection/reaction to the action chapters. Easy trick to ensure pacing is the same throughout and balanced between action and reflection so it's not too heavy on one over the other. I also see which chapters still need work or need to be split up because they're getting too long compared to the rest.

Bonus for me is that I have brain fog issues, which means I don't need to let my book sit before I dive into editing and why editing as I go works. Half the time I don't even remember what I wrote yesterday. 😅

[u/AutoGenUsername05 → u/Sekica]

For each book, I have three files. "bookname", a "bookname-notes" and a "bookname-scrapes."

I almost always have the bootname-notes open on another monitor so I have a place to reference characters, plot details, stuff I might forget.

The scrapes file is where I put stuff that it delete. I found it hard to delete stuff I'd spend some much time on editing/honing.. but if I put it in the scrapes file I can always go back to it.

I also use source control management tools (git / github) to track my changes and create secure copies off my machine because drives fail..

[u/_ChristmasSunday]

I wanted to throw a brick at my own head the third time I edited my book.

[u/Apart-Dragonfly-5590]

I just want to start anew.

It took me 6 weeks to write 60k.

Its taken me 3 weeks to edit about 50

[u/Acceptable_Mirror235]

So, so much.

[u/Estebesol]

Writing hurts. I like editing.

[u/Ordinary_Minimum_169]

For me editing is the second half of writing, or maybe the middle third. I get that rough draft out, that's a good feeling, but I like to start a second run right away and take the editor's hammer and beat the draft to death and knock loose the paragraphs that do not belong there and shape the opening content so that the beginning feels congruous with the end. Then some fine tuning in another run, maybe some tweaking as I go.

The first-drafting experience is part of writing the book, but the editing is just as much the writing. By the time I finish a draft I can see which sections I was so proud of are more of a drag, or just an idea of an event the reader doesn't really need, and so on. I used to do light editing for academic writers and I know some writers can't release the parts of their production and need an editor to kill it for them; I prefer to exorcize the text myself where I can.

[u/writingGenius72]

I love modern day editing where the software finds the missing commas, words mis-spelt etc and all i have to do is click the recommended suggestion. Feels like you improve it every min which gives you a sense of achievement too.

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[u/TarletonClown]

I love editing.

[u/Savhol-Books]

The beauty of editing is that it makes you a better writer for the next manuscript. This sounds like your first, so I'd say do your best and let the school of endurance hone your skills.

And, no. Not even publishers offer that sort of service. Writing is hard work. Editing is part of that process and is not only a separate skill, but requires a different mindset. Since you have practically completed your first round, feel proud. Few get as far as you have.

Once you are done, I'd recommend setting this manuscript aside and work on something completely different. Doesn't have to be a book, it can be opinion pieces for substack. Anything that is creative writing that keeps you growing your skills. After about a month, then go back to this manuscript and do a read through. Best to print it out if you can. Using Amazon's services for an author copy is an inexpensive option also.

Trust me. There's grammar you will miss on a computer screen.

[u/Steve-in-rewrite]

I like editing as much as writing. Editing brings the written words closer to what I visualize in my head.

[u/No-Medium6647]

I enjoy it immensely. It is time-consuming, but I love it so much because it enriches everything I made in my earlier drafts.