Is Editing A Story Work To You?

[MadoushiClef]

Editing is neccessary, it can be lots of fun, and having a Beta is always a Good Thing. In fact, editing with your beta in the same room or on the phone with you can be the funnest way of working on your story.

I prefer printing stuff out, which is a waste of tree and yes I'm ashamed, but putting pen to paper is ALWAYS more satisfying the typing. Even if the story is just going to be typed up later. But reading it out loud to your beta helps the syntax and makes a stronger character voice. Plus I am a perfectionist and my writing partner and I have no qualms about changing each other's works, so long as we give it back and let the other undo/rework any changes. The different perspective always helps me find things I miss and she'll come up with turns of phases that would never cross my mind. Plus she's good at things I'm not, like innocent, naive characters.

I'm going to echo what everyone else has said: Creating is work but it's the kind of work I can love.

[Guest Tuftiperkys]

When editing my own stories, I fear that I may have OCD. I edit and check each draft three times. Always exactly three times.

And yet it doesn't feel like work.

I think the only time editing feels like work is when I'm editing someone else's story. It's one thing to fix spelling and grammar. There are times when a word is repeated too often or the syntax of a sentence is screwed up. Re-wording feels like an actual struggle because I don't want to take away the author's voice/tone/flavor.

Otherwise, no, it doesn't feel like work.

Oh my God, I feel less crazy. Still really crazy, but less so.

I edit as I go, when I've finished, and after I've posted. I read mine over...anywhere from seven to seventeen times. Sometimes this is incredibly stressful for me as I decide after reading it once that I don't like it at all but I won't change it because I refuse to let everything I've just written be wasted. So I just seethe silently and throw murderous glares at it.

I'm overly critical, insane, obsessive, and nitpick every little thing and I am never worse than when it comes to my own stories. Of course, being this unstable, I now like nothing I've written. But I usually like it when I first post and then a day or so passes and the afterglow fades and I never want to see that chapter again.

When I Beta though, editing is stressless as I simply go about fixing all the mistakes and as someone mentioned in a previous post people may have the same word clustered together or something of that nature so if that's the case, I rewrite the paragraph underneath the original and allow the other to pick and choose what they'd like to keep. I looove editing for other people. I don't know why, but I do.