Self editing makes for good writing — and blogging
New York venture capitalist and very widely followed blogger, Fred Wilson (@fredwilson), shares that an educator he greatly respects told him recently that getting kids to rewrite their work, solo, is the single most effective technique for improving their writing.
Obsessive self editing, it turns out, is what makes Wilson such a great blogger.
When I write a blog post, I tend to write it as the idea forms in my brain. I write the whole thing out. And then I rewrite it. I go over every line and make sure the spelling and grammar are correct, I look at the phrasing. I consider the flow. I read it start to finish at least three or four times. I think about the whole and then each part. And I’ll cut out paragraphs, move things, rewrite parts, and mess with it for almost as long as it took me to write it in the first place. And I’ll do that even after I’ve posted it. I actually get some extra benefit from editing while the post is live. I am not sure why that is, but often times the best edits come to me after the post is live.
I do almost exactly the same thing as Wilson, though some of you may think otherwise by my grammar and butchering of the English language.
Most of the time I am referencing things I’ve read elsewhere which I want to share with you. I often copy and paste the entire blog post or article I’m referencing into my blank blog screen. I then delete portions I’ll not be referencing in block-quotes.
Like Wilson, I write things as they flow through my head. I write as if I were talking to you over a coffee or a beer. I then read the entire post over a few times editing, deleting, and moving portions up and down to deliver what I believe provides the best flow for you, the reader.
Exactly like Wilson I continue to edit after the post is live. It’s something I’ve done religously since I started blogging 11 years ago.
There is nothing like the “editing energy” you feel when editing your blog on your iPhone with the WordPress App after your post is live. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I misspelled that, said that, or forgot to put a link in.”
Blogging is not writing an article, corrections can, and should be made, after “going live,” in my opinion. Doing so is a form of constant and never ending improvement.
Now mind you, this editing is mostly taking place immediately after I post, not a week later. When I do post late at night, I always edit quickly again in the morning. It turns out I suck at editing late at night – go figure.
Note also that this obsessive editing of mine is not something that takes a lot of time. Sure there is time spent moving things around before a post goes live. But the editing I do after a post goes live takes 5 minutes or so.
One of the reasons I started to blog was to become a better writer. Doing so was one of my goals after selling my last company. I saw my covenant not to compete period as perhaps one of the few times I’d get to slow down enough to learn to write.
I wasn’t planning to learn to write better by blogging. I just bumped into blogs. After a few posts I realized it a perfect fit.
As pioneer blogger and author of the Weblog Handbook, Rebecca Blood (@rebeccablood), wrote, “You can blog bad, but for only so long.”
The process of putting your writing up for the world to see combined with obsessive self editing leads to better blogging — and writing.
I do not consider myself a good writer. I’ve learned to convey in writing what I am passionate about, but I have a long way to go to catch many of my peers.
I have over 4,500 posts here on Real Lawyers Have Blogs. As Wilson, with over 6,500 posts on AVC, says, “That’s a lot of writing. But you don’t learn as much from the process of putting words on paper (or online). You learn most from the process of perfecting the piece.”
Image courtesy of Flickr by Nic McPhee