Self-Editing Tips

Writing and editing are, I think, very different activities—the first involves creativity, and the second is more about applying logic and making sure you're following "rules" (not only simple rules of grammar but also complex rules of style and readability).

That's why, in an ideal editorial situation, one person writes and another person edits. But I don't live in that perfect world. So with important documents, if I have time (and especially if I'm writing something long), I try to write and edit separately. This is my self-editing process:

1. I write: trying not to self-edit, I finish a draft.
2. I let some time pass: even a few hours can allow me to read with fresh eyes.
3. I print the text and review it with a colored pencil: I'll often find things on paper that I won't find on screen, and removing myself from the writing environment prevents me from slipping too far back into "creative mode."
4. I implement my revisions (and repeat steps 2 and 3 if I did heavy rewriting).
5. I read the document aloud: even if I just whisper, this helps me ensure readability—and I often uncover sneaky typos at this stage.
6. I run a spelling checker: I leave the spelling checker off while I'm writing; I find that it fades into the background if it's on throughout the process.

When I was the managing editor of Macworld magazine (where several editors and copy editors worked with the writer or writers of each piece), we employed some further tips that might help self-editors:

1. Read the first and last lines of each paragraph to check transitions.
2. Turn the document upside-down to check formatting: this allows you to see the document without reading it.

Are you a self-editor? I'd love to see your tips in the comments section.

Image: dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Pigs in Space

When I was a child, my family and I lived for a brief time near Washington, D.C.—in a Maryland suburb. My parents divorced when I was 9; my mother, sisters, and I moved away from Maryland, and I hadn't been back to D.C. until last weekend, when I visited for a conference.

I have a very distinct memory of being in Washington D.C. as a child. It is of being on the D.C. Metro with my family. I don't remember where we were going, but being on a subway was a novel experience, so my sister Sarah and I were in high spirits. (If Emily was there, she was an infant.)

At the back of D.C. Metro cars is a little glass partition in front of two "semi-private" seats. So here is my distinct and vivid memory: sitting in those seats, in the last car, with my sister Sarah, and playing "Pigs in Space" while watching the track recede behind us. Playing "Pigs in Space" entailed shouting, "Pigs ... in ... Spaaaaaace!" whenever the train accelerated.

You're familiar with "Pigs in Space," right? It was a recurring sketch on The Muppet Show.



This memory makes me happy. Isn't memory strange—the little bits and flashes that get recorded deep in your psyche? This long-ago outing is surely part of the reason I have such a fondness for public transportation. Thanks, Jim Henson, Miss Piggy, Link Hogthrob, and Dr. Strangepork.

Pee-wee's Big Career

I'm at the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference this week—Monster.com (my employer) has a big presence at the event; we're the official Hiring Hub, we're showcasing a lot of our digital and mobile products, we're getting in front of influential bloggers, and we're covering news of interest to job seekers.

It's going to be a busy few days, and my schedule is packed. But of course when I saw that Paul Reubens was speaking, I made time for that in my schedule.

Paul Reubens (also—if not better—known as Pee-wee Herman) presented a funny, enlightening, and encouraging discussion of his long career.

One of the more encouraging elements was his discussion of writing the screenplay for his film Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. Reubens says that he dislikes writing and felt, then, that he didn't know how. So when it came time to write the screenplay, he read—and then followed the instructions in—a how-to-write-a-screenplay book. The result is (I believe) a timeless and very entertaining movie, and, Reubens says, the screenplay is now taught in some film-theory classes as a perfect example of a well-paced and classic sort of hero's-journey plot, with all the right elements in the right places.

Reubens says, "The film is 90 minutes long, and 90 pages. On page 30, the bike gets stolen—a classic MacGuffin—and on page 60, Pee-wee finds it again."

Here are that story's encouraging takeaways, for me: First, not knowing how to do something doesn't mean you can't learn how to do it (and then do it well). Reubens followed the rules and learned as he went. Second, you don't need to start from scratch when you create something. Putting your own spin on, or bringing your own viewpoint to, a well-tested formula can be a great place to start and can perhaps even help you spur your creativity.

I thought this was interesting, too: Reubens says he originally started by trying to write an unauthorized remake of the classic film Pollyanna—in part because he was obsessed with Hayley Mills, and in part because he loved the idea of Pee-wee in the Pollyanna role. And don't you love that idea? If you're not sure, view these clips and then answer the question.

Another good Hollywood tidbit from this era of his career: Reubens was introduced to the director of Pee-wee's Big Adventure by a mutual friend, the actress Shelley Duvall, whom I adore. Reubens says that after watching the first seconds of Burton's Frankenweenie, he just knew that Burton would be perfect. (Apparently, the movie studio had been trying to get him to go with another director, whose work Reubens didn't like. So here's another good lesson, and a piece of career advice I give all the time: A great network of contacts is indispensable!)

Reubens talked a bit about the iconic nature of the character he has created, and the difficulty of continuing to play the childlike Pee-wee (though Pee-wee's age remains a mystery) as he (Reubens) ages. He jokes, "You'll be seeing Pee-wee in a turtleneck real soon."

Reubens also touched on a notion that is appropriate to SXSWi, at which people are discussing all things related to social media—the difficulty of maintaining a work persona that is separate from your personal persona. For many years, Reubens was photographed and interviewed only as Pee-wee; it was an extended and complex piece of performance art (though Reubens is too modest to call it that).

That is, Reubens was photographed only as Pee-wee until, as he says, this one day. ... And because, perhaps, Reubens kept his true identity so private and appeared only to the world as Pee-wee, this photo seemed even more shocking, amplifying the resulting scandal (which was blown so out of proportion as to approach the level of farce). We live in a different era, and nowadays it's even harder to separate one's "work persona" from one's "private persona." It's a good caution: Your private life is likely to find its way into the public eye.

For the first movie role he took after this scandal (in Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Reubens asked that his character look as much like his mugshot as possible. Now that's facing negative press head-on and turning it into a positive.



(Top photo: Pee-wee Herman at the Academy Awards in 1988; photographer, Alan Light [courtesy of Wikipedia Commons].)

Grammarly

It seems that computers can do just about anything these days. A fan of the television show Jeopardy, I've been watching with interest the show's commercials for the upcoming contest between two former champions and an IBM supercomputer. (In test runs, the computer has beaten its human opponents—just barely.)

Maybe that computer could serve as a copy editor. But the software grammar checkers now available to us still cause more problems than they solve.

Take Grammarly, which bills itself as the "world's most accurate grammar checker" and charges a small monthly fee for unlimited use. This is an attractive notion for me—I often serve as my own copy editor, and it can be difficult to proof and edit one's own writing.

So, expecting to be humbled, I ran an article I'd recently written—"Selling Yourself in the Job Interview"—through Grammarly.

I was disappointed with its first suggestion. Grammarly believes the persistent grammar myth about not ending a sentence with a preposition. Yes, you should avoid ending sentences with unnecessary prepositions, as in "Where is the car at?" But any copy editor who suggests replacing the perfectly acceptable sentence "I have no idea what the professor is talking about" with the sentence "I have no idea about that which the professor is talking" (as Grammarly did) should be fired immediately.

Grammarly incorrectly identified the subject of this sentence: "Offering solutions to these problems is a great way to overcome a lack of directly applicable experience." It suggested that the subject of this sentence was plural, and that "is" was incorrect. It is not. (This inability to correctly handle subject-verb agreement is common to computer grammar checkers.)

Grammarly didn't like this sentence either: "Prepare three or four effective sound bites that highlight your past successes and your skills." It suggested, instead: "Prepare three or for effective, sound bites that highlight your past successes and your skills."

That suggested comma is especially problematic—because comma usage is difficult to master, and many writers might not know that it would be incorrect here. (Grammarly thought that "sound" was an adjective, not part of the compound noun "sound bites.")

Grammarly suggests removing all contractions from your writing. This is a good suggestion for a lot of formal and academic writing. It also made a potentially helpful suggestion about removing the word "specific" (a word that is often redundant). But all in all, this grammar checker wanted to insert too many errors. I can't recommend it.