Cut!

"I have only made this letter rather long because i have not had time to make it shorter"
This famous quote was written in 1656, and it speaks to the power of editing. Today, think about your editing process...

1. How many drafts does your writing usually go through before you consider it done? (or do you subscribe to the first thought, best thought school of non-editing?)
I am far too attention-challenged to go through too many drafts, I usually rough draft, tweak and cut what is needed right then and then pass it on to a second and maybe third eye...then do what I need to do from there. I am, first and foremost, terrible at editing my own work.

2. How hard is it for you to 'cut your darlings' - phrases or scenes you are attached to, but don't fit well or are dead weight in the story?
My darlings could NEVER be dead weight! Ok, Ok. I've only encountered this, really, a few times. I've been lucky enough to find that what usually needs cutting are tidbits that I wasn't so certain about to begin with. But on those rare ocassions its very hard and I have been guity of ignoring the need to disastrous results.

3. What mistakes do you often find yourself editing out? (Passive voice, excessive adverbs, etc) Have you improved in these areas the more you edited?
My most common is runon sentances but I find much worse crimes than grammatical sins in books that actually make it to the bookseller such as character names switched around in scenes that obviously had to do with the other character, repeated descriptors, and simply odd uses for words (not incorrect exactly, just odd). I love words. A lot. And I am guilty of it myself but I try to make my writings approachable and not need a thesaurus or dictionary to make it through. If I want to show off with my "big words" I choose scrabble or private emails (the latter might explain a bit about my shrinking number of email contacts).

4. What's the best advice you have reiceved on editing? What's the best advice you can give your fellow writers?
Don't pay too much attention to your own work. Writers are, often, like other "artists" which means perfectionists. And you are always your own worse judge. I give the briefest passing of things I write and try to force myself to only look for the most obvious mistakes otherwise I will likely pick apart what I am writing to the point of destroying it. It was good advice.

5. BONUS POINTS! Take one of your rough drafts of a scene or short story and edit it. Show us the before and after version.



Uneddited (spelling pun intended):
From: Kenneth's Monster
He splashed the cold water on his face and, as the water fell, he stared in disbelief in the mirror. The bedroom outside the bathroom doorway was very different than it should be and, as he looked, the bare hint of a leg on the bed chilled him. It wasn't his wife's leg at all, not that slender thing with the shiny anklet.
He turned from the mirror and walked to the bathroom doorway. He stared at the bed and the leg that stared back was meatier, the slightly overweight leg he was used to seeing in his bed night after night though he had scarcely touched it in these past few years. He felt a twinge of guilt. It was the girl he had seen earlier, in the elevator with the pretty ankles and the silver ankelt who had looked at him as if he was a creep.  
He turned back to the mirror but even with the sleep quickly leaving his brain, the scene was still different. Now he noticed things different about the bathroom. His wife had always insisted on a frilly bathroom to his dismay. When a man sat on the throne in the crapper, he wanted to read the paper and be in the primal man-room but all he saw around him were fake flowers in baskets, pretty paintings of trees, and the fragrance of some bloom as if this were a brillaint garden instead of a place to make fertilizer. Now, the bathroom held a plain but still pretty atmosphere. The walls were a rose color but not one painting or picture hung there, not one basket of fake flowers, though a green plant did hang from a ceiling hook. In the bedroom, that slender leg, more exposed now all the way to the thigh, and that anklet dangling there, strangely inviting.
Then he noticed his face and his blood ran cold. Though it was his face staring back, that insane smile was not him at all.

Edited
He splashed the cold water on his face and, as the water fell, he stared in disbelief at the mirror. The bedroom just outside the bathroom doorway was very different than it should be. As he looked, the bare hint of a leg on the bed chilled him. It wasn't his wife's leg at all. Not that slender thing with the shiny anklet.
He turned from the mirror and walked to the bathroom doorway. He stared at the bed and the leg that stared back was meatier, the slightly overweight leg he was used to seeing in his bed night after night (though he had scarcely touched it in these past few years). He felt a twinge of guilt. It was the girl he had seen earlier, in the elevator with the pretty ankles and the silver ankelt. The very girl who had looked at him as if he was a creep.
He turned back to the mirror but even with the sleep quickly leaving his brain, the scene was still different. Now he noticed things  that had changed about the bathroom. His wife had always insisted on a frilly bathroom decor to his dismay. When a man sat on the throne in the crapper, he wanted to read the paper and be in the primal man-room but all he saw around him were fake flowers in baskets, pretty paintings of trees, and pretty pink and yellow towels. The fragrance of some bloom filled the air as if this were a brillaint garden instead of a place to make fertilizer. Now, the bathroom in the mirror held a plain but still pretty atmosphere. The walls were a rose color but not one painting or picture hung there, not one basket of fake flowers sat on the bathroom counter, though a green plant did hang from a ceiling hook. In the bedroom, that slender leg, more exposed now; all the way to the thigh, that anklet dangling from that thin ankle, strangely inviting.
He suddenly noticed his face then and his blood ran cold. Though it was his face staring back, that insane smile was not him at all.