When you finish a writing assignment, who is the first person to edit your work? Here’s a clue: if you answer the publisher of your work, and that isn’t you, you’re in for a surprise.

The Answer is You

You are your first editor of whatever you write. You did the heavy lifting of putting the work into the writing. Now it’s time to polish it and get it accepted.

Now, when I say edit, I don’t mean the tiny revisions that escape your fingers as you write. I mean, when you complete your document, no matter what it is, you edit the whole thing from beginning to end for corrections, revisions, and fact checks before you submit it.

Writers, you want your work to be accepted by your audiences, right? First, it has to get accepted by publishers, and the competition is steep. Look through the material already available, all the writing online and in the markets that someone else wrote.

Publishers are looking for the writing that will grab the attention of readers and site crawlers alike. Editors are looking for the basics to be well in hand. Too many errors and your work can become more of a burden to add to their workload.

How Can You Get Your Writing in Shape?

Search engine optimization is very important. But trust me, nothing is more important than good copy.

What will set you apart from many writers is being a good editor of your writing. Here are five best practices that can improve the odds of your work going into the publisher’s good pile.

1. Consider your employer’s audience and the voice projected by the company. Emulate that tone if that’s your job, especially if your ghostwriting. It would not be good to have the employer sound erratic. And using the proper voice is key.

Be honest about what’s present in your content. Is it more you and not enough reflection of the publication you’re writing for? Be willing to let go of these.

2. Step away from your work before you put on your editing hat. If you don’t have a lot of time, try working on another task for a while. It has helped me to do this because it pulls me away from the work I was doing. And while I’m away from it, I’m writing on something else that needs to be done.

For example, I’m writing this post after having written a poem for Telling Stories. Once I’ve completed this draft, I can return to the other to edit it again. Since I have time, though, I’ll go out and run errands and not think about either—much. This will help me to return with a fresh eye.

3. You should already know your writing style weaknesses. Always edit with those in mind and clear them out first. Sometimes I fall into the poetical rhetoric that can irritate the prose reader. I pull those out first thing. If you have a problem with there, their, and they’re, triple-check those.

4. The most critical thing that you can do is to get your grammar right. If you don’t know it, aren’t strong in proper usage, DON’T QUIT. You can learn that. There are courses and websites and books. I do alright on my own, but you better believe I keep references close at hand.

Grammatical errors stands out to people who know what to look for. And, they can frustrate readers by making them hesitate. If it’s your weakness, conquer it if you believe your writing is worth the effort.

5. Read your work for flow, straight through, out loud and if you can, to someone else. I don’t have an audience to listen every time I write something. And thankfully I learned early on, that I could be my own audience. Stepping away from your writing helps to give you a fresh ear. The biggest thing that helps is to read your writing out loud.

I’m not sure why it works, only that it helps me tremendously to actually put my voice to it, adding emphasis and inflection. It probably works because it forces me to give the rest of my attention to a piece. I can’t read aloud and focused, and still be thinking about other things—which happens when I write silently. Editing is where you find out how much they distracted you.

These are five practices that have seen me successfully through writing and editing jobs. What are your best practices for getting your writing accepted? I’d love to hear from you.

Getting it Right the First Time is Rarer than You Think

It’s a rare one who writes right the first time, every time. And I am not that rare one. I used to think a poem needed to work the first time written, or it was meant to be trashed. I thought the writing process that we learned about in grade school was for the masses and that genius afforded the real writers to just write once. I got it into my head that I couldn’t pursue writing because I was one of the masses and not the genius. Happily, I found that is not the case.

Ritual is Only Part of the Process

Through the years, I’ve read a lot about writing. Not the definitive list, but a good few books and articles, by some profoundly talented people. One common thread I noticed in the fabric of all writing stories, is that the best of them—of us, work at writing. We work to refine our skills, to keep up with current communication trends, and we invent new techniques along the way that suit the way we write.

And, there are the rituals; stories abound of writers who sit, sweat, fret, fume, gnash, gnaw, rant, writhe, meditate, moan, exercise, chant, eventually yielding to release and renewal, to re-insert balance and bliss into their writing life. Many that I’ve read about have ridden this frantic magic carpet, some regularly, only to return to sanity and civility, after having given birth to their next great work.

Hands Off! Move Away from the Article

That’s a great deal of fitful frenzy to finalize a piece only to skip the last step. Working writers do put work down before proofreading. They take time away from a piece in order to clear it out of their heads. However, they don’t submit their writing before they return to it later with their fresh reviewer eyes.

Ted Kooser, Walter Mosley, Julia Cameron Natalie Goldberg, and Brian Clark all write about their rituals to get the writing done. They also have in common their healthy respect for proofreading.

Okay, So How Long Do I Wait?

The consensus on preferred length of time is days, weeks maybe, away from a piece of writing. One writer even suggested that you stay away the length of time it takes to forget you wrote that piece.

As copywriters, we generally don’t have that much time. When I can’t separate from a piece for days, I leave it for another article or two. Or even better, I’ll put mine down for someone else’s work, preferably on another topic. It sort of clears my mental palette.

And, To the Proof

When you return to your project with a fresh mind and eyes, be ready to let go of parts that really don’t work. When I return to a piece of writing, I’m looking for three things to be present:

1. correct grammar
2. clear content
3. appropriate tone

I don’t want readers to struggle through improper usage and cryptic innuendo when the tone needs to be clear. If they’re still there, be ready to let go of the parts that really don’t work. After all, do you really want to claim, possess, and hoard a dud? I’m guessing no.

Take time to proofread. If you have to change it, just do it. It’s yours. You own it. And when published, it will stand for you, good or bad. Then proofread it again. Then, ask yourself these questions too:

• Does the content speak to the title?
• Did you say what you wanted?
• Can your audience hear you loud and clear, or will you need to be translated, interpreted, broken down?

Writing is hard work and the processes we use to get the job done vary widely. One constant we all must implement is proofreading. You have to hear the continuity in your work before you can expect anyone else to hear it. If you don’t get it, don’t let it go.