Why I Continue to Edit an Article After Publication/Curation
By: Julia E Hubbel
Tags: Writing, Muse, Editing, Writing Tips, Professional Development

Why I Continue to Edit an Article After Publication/Curation

Because after some distance from your piece, you may see it differently.

Medium asks, as do all publications, that you edit your work before you publish.

Too many of us don’t bother, thinking ourselves such great writers that such slog work is beneath us.

That kind of thoughtless arrogance shows up in articles that are impossible to read due to poor grammar, lousy spelling, sentences that last an entire page.

Look, I can’t speak for anyone else but I can’t read that shit. I just can’t. A while back someone got an article curated, one that had some solid information it, but was so poorly written it was an agony to try to digest. The woman wrote sentences so long that I repeatedly lost the thread of what she was trying to say. And I wanted to read it.

Dear god woman, GET AN EDITOR. Take a class. Learn to write. Get serious.

Poor writing is a punishment to try to read.

When English is our second language, we can be particularly challenged. Dear Reader might give us a bit of leeway, which can end up as rope with which to hang ourselves if we’re not careful. If English isn’t our first language, and we are writing for the English-speaking market, it behooves us to get other eyes on our material before we publish.

If I were learning to write in Spanish, there is no way I’d push publish without ensuring that a native speaker had seen my stuff. A native speaker with excellent writing chops, that is.

That teaches us where we’re weak, and how to improve. Good writing makes for loyal fans. Lousy writing…well makes for loyal fools, but I digress.

The reasons I never stop editing my work even after publication/curation:

I make mistakes. I type 140 wpm even with a fractured finger. That kind of uber-swift production guarantees that I make mistakes like writing say say. My brain didn’t register the mistake. Going back after I have had time to read other stuff allows me to catch it. It’s live. Since it’s live, that means eyeballs are on it. For my part, that’s a huge motivator to make sure that what folks are reading doesn’t have a spare apostrophe like an errant flea where it doesn’t belong. I make mistakes, part II. Like so many of us, despite the fact that my grammar is usually spot-on, I will periodically, as do we all, mis-match a verb to a subject. Many of us will match the verb to a plural prepositional phrase as though that’s subject. This is what that looks like: A herd (singular subject) of elephants were (plural verb, matched to elephants, which is the object of the phrase and NOT the sentence subject). The proper writing is A herd of elephants was… I see this all the time, and it jars the eye. It’s poor grammar, sloppy, and easy to miss when your fingers fly as mine do. It startles the hell out of Dear Reader. This is because I am just evil by nature. Some poor Dear Reader is humming along nicely and all of a sudden the sentence she’s reading changes. WTF? What happened? That would be Evil Writer here, editing after said piece has gone public. I love startling people. Keeps Dear Reader on Dear Toes. It’s respectful and professional to keep improving. Even though I produce at least one or more articles a day, I still go back, and that includes much older articles. While you might find that odious and additional work, what that does for me and Dear Reader is ensure that if there is a fact that’s changed, or a change in how I see things, that tends to keep my work pretty evergreen. I can’t do it on all my work, but I do it on some. Dear Reader appreciates relevant (I am speaking for myself of course, but also those who care enough to poke me in the proverbial side every so often). I see with different eyes. Even just ten minutes after publishing a piece, I can find mistakes, typos, places where I mistakenly deleted an entire sentence (you’re not the only one who does that, Sparky, I think we all do). A little distancing goes a long way. In so many instances when I had the common sense to get out of the way to let my Muse do the speaking, I note that she doesn’t always get her syntax right. No matter. Ancient Goddess don’t much care about grammar. It’s my job to edit the Divine.

Holy shit. Did I just say that?

No, She did. We’re cool.

Photo by Soumik Dey on Unsplash

Sometimes my Muse speaks so swiftly that I can barely keep up. It’s my job to make sure what she has to say is palatable, professionally-presented, and makes Her look good.

My pleasure.

And because I am committed to ensuring that reading my stuff, those of you who can tolerate it that is, is pleasurable, I edit. Brutally, regularly, constantly.

Because my work will always be a work in progress, just like Life.