Self-Editing Tricks to Tuck up Your Sleeve

Whether you’re writing a short story, blog post, poem or working on a novel, at some point you’re going to have to look back over your own words. This comes at different stages in the process for many of us, but we all have to do it eventually. And its a buggering nightmare, most of the time. Mainly because deep down you know you’re never going to catch it all. There’ll be the odd spelling error, a mistyped phrase, an unnecessary adverb or heaven forbid – a misused semi colon.

To be honest, I’ve been caught out so many times now I tend to laugh it off. Discovering all these things and more days or even weeks after some of my work has gone live is always rather  embarrassing. Fortunately, I’ve only ever found myself in the most gentile company of fellow readers and writers, and most of them are very forgiving about obvious mistakes.

But when it comes to my more serious ventures – the ones I intend to make money from, I do everything I can to make sure the text is as polished as possible. And while line and copy editors are a service I think all writers should take advantage of, it never hurts to do as much as you can before handing it off. So here are a few tips and tricks I use to help me weed out even the most easily overlooked mistakes in my prose.

The Robots are Coming

I hope we can all get along… (Get Lost You Stinking Robot by melora)

Just over a month ago, a hostess named ChihiraAico was working in a department store in Tokyo. She made a very capable worker, dressed in a traditional kimono and politely providing information and directions to customers, able to communicate in Japanese, Korean, English and even Japanese sign language. But the most remarkable thing about her was that unlike all the other assistants in the store, she wasn’t human. She was a robot.

Discovering Humanism

Only Human, photography by Christine Day Lorico

“Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.” – Bertrand Russell

It would seem, after careful study and a few cautious conversations, I am in fact not the simple atheist I once thought I was. Funny, after my rather dramatic renouncement of Catholicism when I was sixteen I assumed I was about done with questions of faith. Apparently not.

An Argument for Escapism

escapism n. the tendency to seek distraction and relief from reality.

I hereby go on the record to (politely) disagree with the Oxford English Dictionary (’96 edition), because while I do indeed use many forms of media to distract myself from reality, I don’t do it to get ‘relief’. I am not depressed or stressed, I’ve not suffered any recent trauma and nor do I shy away from working a forty hour week or being with my family.

What I am, more often than not, is bored.