Editing Without a Need for Control
Still sick. Here’s a note I wrote as a comment somewhere else, that may be worth remembering. (Revised into a more general shape for more people.)
It is really great when a writer gets far enough into writing to split up writing and editing into two different modes, done at different times, so that they can do each with more faithfulness to the craft. This is something I really recommend people do in my writing coaching, and usually it takes a while to debug some habits and assumptions to enable a person to separate the two modes.
Many people assume that writing is the “flowy one” and editing is the “controlled” one. I however disagree. I think both can be flowy and both can be controlled. You split them up because they get in the way of each other when you do them together, not because one is fundamentally flowy and one is fundamentally controlling.
Editing, when it is going well for me, often actually is pretty freeing as well - almost like the writing - actually often more free and more good feelings than the writing. I feel more like myself, and more like myself in the process of being and becoming myself, when the editing is healthy, when I am healthy.
There are certain things I can do while half asleep. Playing the flute, loading the dishwasher, now, newly, playing Ode to Joy on the guitar. Editing is also on that list. I’m a good editor and have done editing work for students while extremely sleepy or sick and it’s been good. Whatever kinds of “control” that are involved in editing are soft enough, or preset enough, that it doesn’t actually require that much control in the moment, in the way one might need a lot of control when assembling machines together.
I think when editing is easy, editing is reading but in a setup where making edits is easy (aka on a computer, with a keyboard, etc.) aka you are just reading, but then with active imagination around “what you are seeing on the screen” and “what you wish you were reading” or “what you are saying in your head from what you are reading” and then putting in the missing pieces, like adding brushstrokes to a painting (or painting Warhammer figurines what they are supposed to look like, the colors.) When it is going well it really does feel a lot like “needs more green, here, there we go.” Aka, you are just reading, but with your paintbrush ready.
If I am feeling too sick to read anything, it makes sense that I am feeling too sick to “edit” anything. If you are too tired to be reading something of the complexity level of the writing you are editing, then you are too tired to be editing it.
This kind of editing also makes sense even if I have to reorganize a bunch, in that I still have to “read it” and then feel where it has to go, perhaps like making a collage rather than painting.
I’d also learned over the years that “having feelings” can be labor intensive. Usually for editing to be productive, I need a 1.5 hr chunk of time, so that I can have the feelings and then have the next feelings, and then the next feelings, enough to do a chunk through to the point of legibility for future me.
And then, I also see why a lot of people do a chunk of writing, then put it in a drawer for 1-3 months, before touching it again, while they work on something else. This way they can come back to it with renewed curiosity and interest in “reading” what they’d written before. Rereading your own writing can be a lot of fun, but often not right after you just wrote it...your feelings and senses are kind of burned in funny ways from the act of the writing, and those senses usually need something nutritious to revive and rehydrate them, so they can go again.
This differentiator around “editing” == “reading” and writing being something else, ought make one feel a lot more secure around, “I can’t do this kind of editing right now because I can’t do this kind of reading right now” in a way that really makes sense to me. I can do some kinds of reading and some kinds of writing, but if I cannot do something like read the complexity of my own work as written when I was feeling well and writing it then editing it would also not be on the table for me.
Weirdly, I’d been able to do some of my writing/editing for my contract writing job a wee bit while sick. In some ways it’s easier!
Now that I’d written it all out, my feelings feel a lot less like “I don’t know how to edit this” (this being, my book draft) and a lot more like “frustration at not getting to edit” in a way that’s similar to a little kid “not being allowed to go to the ice rink yet.” It’s really fun but I can’t do it yet.