(7 min read.) Forbidden writing tip: I edit as I write. It makes my writing better. Here’s how to edit a first draft WHILE you write it. I’ll also share quotes from a few famous folks who do it, and offer some good practical reasons why you might give it a try.
I call this one a “forbidden writing tip” because so many people have told me not to do this. Many writing books (and courses) will explicitly tell you that this is the devil’s road. Conventional writing advice says “If you want to finish your project, always write your full first draft before you start editing.” Nah, I won’t be doing that. Too busy editing and writing and editing and writing in a blissfully productive swirl of joyful freedom.
I’m not scared that editing along the way will keep me from finishing my work.
You don’t have to be scared of that either.
People talk about doing a complete “messy first draft” before they edit a single word. If that works for you, that’s cool. Anything that works for you is JUST RIGHT. Don’t let me stop you. But people generally say that a full first draft before editing is the “right way to write” and I hate that. I simply don’t think it’s the best approach for every project or every brain.
If you’re curious, I’ll offer a few reasons you might like to learn how to edit a first draft along the way, as you go, before you finish getting the whole story down.
I’ll also share a few practical tips for your edit-while-you-write toolkit.
Ok, if you already know you want to try editing while you write but feel like you’re not supposed to, let me (an award-winning writer and professional writing coach with decades of experience and millions of readers) give you official permission:
YES, IT’S OKAY TO EDIT BEFORE YOU FINISH WRITING.
People who agree with me:
JOAN F*CKING DIDION:
“Before I start to write, the night before—I mean, when I finish work at the end of the day, I go over the pages, the page that I’ve done that day, and I mark it up. And I mark it up and leave it until the morning, and then I make the corrections in the morning, which gives me a way to start the day.” (source.)
ROALD “WILLIE WONKA” DAHL:
“By the time I am nearing the end of a story, the first part will have been reread and altered and corrected at least one hundred and fifty times.” (source.)
PRESTIGIOUS CONTEMPORARY LITERARY GUY LINCOLN MICHAEL:
I don’t have a hot pull quote but I appreciate his essay on this topic, because I know I’m right but it’s still nice to hear it confirmed from someone living and legit. You might think I’m just some gal from the internet, but he’s a seasoned editor of literary journals and an official fiction teacher at Sarah Lawrence College. Open it in another tab so you read it later, in case you need more convincing even after you’re done listening to me. (link.)
WHY EDIT A FIRST DRAFT WHILE YOU WRITE?
You’re gonna learn about your story as you go. I learned things while writing chapter two that I didn’t know when I wrote chapter one. Sometimes, new information in chapter two means I have to change a lie I accidentally wrote in chapter one. Sure, I could make a note that says “revise this lie later” and then come back to it… or I could fix it now. If I fix it now, it’s fixed. If I don’t fix it now, it probably be more work to try and recall the context and the specifics when I finally return to edit chapter one. PLUS: in the meanwhile, the whole rest of the time I’m writing my first draft, that unfinished task will take up cognitive energy. The Zeigarnik effect is a studied and documented phenomenon that shows unfinished tasks nibble away at our focus until we complete them (science fact.) I don’t want to tie my focus up in unfinished edits; not even a little. I need all my focus free and available so I can FINISH WRITING THE BOOK. That’s my lazy-girl reason why (when I know I need to make a revision) I do it before I keep going. It’s done and I don’t have to think about it again. It simply makes writing EASIER. I love doing stuff the easy way.
You clean the kitchen while you cook. Why not clean the manuscript while you write? If a chef said nobody could wash a single pan or fork until all of the restaurant’s cooking had been done for the whole day, how well do you think that restaurant would function? The counters would be a greasy mess, there would be onions and garlic on the knives when you needed to cut the chocolate cake, and once dinner was finally over the entire crew would be washing dishes until sunrise. Don’t do that to yourself as a writer. Creativity can be messy. Why save all the mess for the end? Clean up as you go. If you have to face all the mess at the end, that’s like a punishment for having completed your draft. Finishing shouldn’t lead to punishment; it should lead to reward! Reward yourself by having a nice clean draft waiting for yourself in the future.
You’ll make the same mistakes less. If you see a mistake in your writing (since all of “good writing” is subjective and about personal taste, a mistake in this case is simply something you’ve done that you don’t actually like), there’s a good chance you’re going to make that same mistake again later. As a writer, you’ll likely make the same mistakes a whole silly bunch of times because they come from some kind of habit you have learned about how to write. Our habits don’t always match our goals. (For example: a lot of us have the habit of chickening out, when our goals are to be bold on the page.) The first step to changing a habit is to notice it. If you edit as you go, you’ll notice your habits sooner, which means changing them sooner, which means that by the time you finish your manuscript you might actually have set yourself free. Edit as you go and give yourself the chance to learn along the way.
You could die tomorrow. What kind of unfinished manuscript will you leave behind? Do you want to leave a “sh*tty first draft” for your next of kin to cringe over? Wouldn’t it be nice to leave at least a first chapter or an opening scene that will make everyone recognize your full genius and mourn you even harder? Sorry if this isn’t your style, but it’s a mindset that truly works for me.
HOW TO EDIT A FIRST DRAFT WHILE YOU WRITE
You can do this any way you want, but here are a few approaches I love:
Sentence by sentence. If you don’t love the sentence on the page, don’t keep going. Get this sentence just right, then write the next one. Work it ’til it feels like what you really mean to say. Yes: this can be excruciating. You might not always want to edit a first draft this way, but it can be a powerful exercise to really try it. Even if it doesn’t become your baseline writing method, working sentence-by-sentence once in a while is a practical shortcut to better writing craft that’s great if you want to invest in building a stronger voice. It teaches you to attend to the details of how you like to use language. Sentences are the fundamental brick that builds writing, and the way you structure them defines your voice. Try editing sentence-by-sentence as you write, even just for a page or for only ten minutes, and see what it does for you. (Want more on sentence structure? Try stick the landing.)
Session by session. Each time you write, look over what you wrote in the previous session. Make changes and edits and improvements to those pages, then begin to write something new. This is a great habit if you want to build momentum. It can be particularly helpful if you only write once in a while because this habit can help you “get back into” your work by priming your brain to remember all the depth and urgency you felt last time you wrote. Edit a first draft gradually by look back briefly at where you’ve just come from, and it’ll help you see where you want to go.
Just a little. You don’t have to totally edit a first draft. It’s okay to do an incomplete revision in the middle of your writing. Anything you improve is progress towards a final draft. So, when you see something that needs doing, have a little try. Whether it’s rearranging a character’s kitchen layout or moving the whole storyline to 1890s Chicago, if you realize you want to change something about your work-in-progress, just change it. Then go back through your manuscript that same day and change as much of whatever it might affect as you can. You don’t have to update everything, just get some of it done while it’s fresh on your mind. It’s a gift to future you if you can edit a first draft even a little bit along the way. This can be especially helpful if you feel overwhelmed by a very large or difficult project; slow progress is progress, so embrace the incremental.
So, those are a few things that work for me (and for some of the folks in my coaching practice. But what’s the best answer for how to edit a first draft? ANY WAY YOU CAN, BUDDY. As always: any way you write is right. Any way you edit is good. Just don’t give up.
If you’re working on a first draft, you might like Writing a First Draft: How to Do it Y’all (5 Tips & What to Avoid.)