When It's Time To Edit...Take A Break First
Writing long stories, school papers, and manuscripts is hard work. It requires you to spend hours, days, and even weeks working on a piece of writing. When you spend large amounts of time working on projects it helps to take time off before working on editing your draft. Sometimes taking a break before editing is extremely helpful in jump starting your brain to be able to process errors in spelling, grammar, and the structure of the piece you are working on.
Editing in an important part of the writing process. It is through editing, writers are able to perfect their work and find mistakes made during construction of a draft. There are many who stop and edit as they write but this can be problematic. It slows down the writing process and also takes away focus from thinking about how to continue a piece. Often it is best to write an entire draft and then work on editing.
If you have ever tried to edit a piece of writing that has taken hours and hours of time you may know the difficulty of finding mistakes. When you've focused on your piece for a long period of time it is often hard to switch gears. It may be hard for your brain to process any errors you made while constructing your draft.
This is why it's important to take a break. Even taking a short break is helpful. By taking a moment away from your writing, you allow your mind a chance to clear so that it won't miss or ignore any mistakes you made while writing. Next time you work hard on a piece of writing take a break before you edit it and determine if this helps you in the editing process.
Charles Darwin had a similar philosophy ... except here he sometimes waited many years before publication. "During subsequent years, whenever I had leisure, I pursued my experiments, and my book on Insectivorous Plants was published July 1875,—that is sixteen years after my first observations. The delay in this case, as with all my other books, has been a great advantage to me; for a man after a long interval can criticise his own work, almost as well as if it were that of another person. The fact that a plant should secrete, when properly excited, a fluid containing an acid and ferment, closely analogous to the digestive fluid of an animal, was certainly a remarkable discovery." (Insectivorous Plants). But I am not recommending such a long time-interval for steemians!
That's very interesting information. Thanks for sharing it. I never knew he waited years to publish but I have heard of several modern authors who do similar practices. I vaguely think I read it was Stephen King who will write a book and then leave it to go write a different book and then when he's finished with the next book he'll return to the first to edit it.
Taking a break is often a good idea. Not only does it help you find typos and stuff, but leaving a piece "alone" for 24 hours helps you discover "flow problems" and other issues.
"Long form" articles are hard work. Whenever I write a 1000+ word post it tends to take at least 3-4 hours, from idea to publication.
So very true. Many professional writers I've read advise leaving your work alone for at least 24 hours. I think just taking a short break can benefit the editing process greatly. You just need to separate your mind from your work long enough to refocus it when returning.