Top Highlights

• Editing involves a deep, long meditation within which the editor or self-editor listens to every last sound the prose before him makes, then separates the music from the noise.
• then to gently press or, if necessary, spur her writer there. Editing is a conversation, not a monologue. The wise self-editor will follow the example of the wise editor, and conduct an open-minded conversation with herself.
• The Pen: If you normally type, try writing longhand instead.
• Do not impose your taste on the text set before you, be it your own or another’s. Ask not, is this my kind of writing? Ask, is this working? Is this working on its own terms?
• For the draft edit, you stop writing, gather a number of pages together, read them, make notes on what works and doesn’t, then rewrite.