Edit. Please.

I am a huge advocate of editing and by editing, I don’t mean correcting typos here and there. I mean serious word-haulage. I believe in rewriting scenes and chapters, inserting or deleting them and agonising over the perfect word (for an appropriate amount of time, anyway) until everything is ship-shape.

But a few weeks ago, my polar opposite popped up and argued against editing for reasons that truly stumped me. This person, whom I shall call Bob, believes he doesn't have to edit because he did well in secondary and tertiary education without editing anything.

I pointed out that writing in secondary and tertiary education tends to involve essays, where students pour all their knowledge into a pre-determined structure of approximately 2,000 words. Writing a novel, where a writer encompasses elements such as plot, characterisation, themes, symbolism etc. in 80,000 words is a completely different thing.

Bob continued to say he doesn't believe in rewriting or cutting scenes because he insists if he wrote it down, then it has to be important. But there are a lot of works out there, published and unpublished, that have ‘fluff’ or ‘padding’ where scenes and descriptions add nothing to the story. For example, talking about the weather or the landscape or every itty bitty detail about a Victorian dress no-one cares about.

I've read many examples of writing where writers have obviously not given their work a second glance. These people typed whatever went into their heads and uploaded without thought. The result was pages and pages of spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, plots holes and characters who were either in desperate need of therapy or a couple of shots of tequila to come alive.

You know those characters. The protagonist who has a tortured past he cannot let go of, spends every night hating himself and hints at his history every two pages but never states what it is; and the two-dimensional sidekick who ambles around, has no personality, provides no action, is only there as a yes-man or comic-relief and mysteriously disappears halfway through the book because the author forgot about him.

A third person whom I shall call Jane said Truman Capote never edited his work, which didn't impact his sales. So if he could get away without editing, why can’t someone else?

To this, I point you to David So, who makes a fairly good point about education in this Youtube video (be warned, he swears).

I want to highlight this: many students say, “But Albert Einstein failed maths*, so I’ll be fine.” 

David So's reply is spot on: “Bitch, you ain't Einstein!”

I draw a parallel here. Unless you’re Truman Capote, you’re going to have to edit. But if you publish your manuscript and reach as many sales as Truman Capote then feel free to email me and I’ll gladly retract this post and write a new one detailing my undying envy for a writing god or goddess like you.

But as most of us are only mortal, editing is the way to go. It's been tried and tested by millions of published authors so why ignore their advice? There's a reason they're published! Nearly every author advises newbies to edit and rewrite, so don't assume you know better and accept their advice.

*Albert Einstein never failed maths—it’s a nasty rumour to let kids slack off. In this sense, can we prove Truman Capote never edited?