Editing

After you have written the first draft of a document, it is now time to start the editing process. The purpose of editing is to create a final draft that has a well-organized structure, a seamless flow from one topic to another, and a single consistent voice.

When we are writing the initial draft of a document, our goal should just be to write, and we should not be too worried about our quality or consistency. Creating a document from scratch is hard enough, and if we agonize over every word, sentence, and paragraph, we will make very little progress, which can be demoralizing. Instead, our initial draft should be written quickly, so that we have a bird's-eye-view of our document, and we can get a sense of what we actually want to say, and how we want to say it.

A classic mistake with writing drafts is succumbing to the sunk-cost fallacy, such that the thought of deleting or re-writing what you have already written can seem wasteful, and therefore should be avoided. In reality, by the very definition of the term "first draft," it is not ready to be published, and will need to be edited until it is.

A common misconception is thinking that people can come up with a final draft ready for publication on their first try, but to quote the famous American novelist Ernest Hemingway, "The first draft of anything is...poop." Note that, "poop" is not the word used in the actual quote. Hemingway, therefore, gives us a pass to create an imperfect first draft, so instead of trying to write a perfect first draft in the name of saving time, we should see it as the first step in the writing process, to be immediately followed by editing.

Editing has no hard-and-fast rules, but there are certain characteristics that should be present in a final draft of a document.

The first characteristic is the structure of a document, which is how the content is broken up into sections and sub-sections, as well as how the content is structured within those sections. In your first draft, there may have been no sections at all, and only a massive wall of words - which is fine - as through the editing process the structure of our document can begin to crystallize.

The second characteristic is the flow of the document, or said another way, how seamlessly one section transitions into another. If our reader were to choose to read the entire document from start to finish, there should not be any tangents that distract the reader from the logical sequence established by the document's structure.

For example, if we were writing a recipe for baking a cake, if in the middle we included a section on how to buy a cake-pan, that would seem out-of-place when preceded by ingredients and followed by how to mix those ingredients. Instead, if we would like to talk about buying a cake-pan, it should either be moved to the introduction, or added as a sidebar, so as to maintain the logical flow of our recipe from one stage to another.

The third characteristic is the document having one "voice," which is to say it reads like it was written by one person. Voice can be thought of as a combination of reading level and tone, where one voice might be a 6^th grade reading level with a humorous tone, and another voice might have a 12^th grade reading level with a serious tone. Depending on what you are writing, either might be appropriate, but you should pick one and stick with it throughout the document.

Note that an exception to this rule is if you have a guest author write your introduction, as you might if an expert in your field wanted to endorse what you wrote. In this case, the introduction would be written in their voice, and the rest of the document would be in yours. Another exception would be if you included a testimonial or a transcript of an interview, such that each person quoted would have their own voice.

If you are writing a document by yourself, but are writing the document over a long period of time, you might find that sections you wrote earlier have a slightly different voice than later sections you wrote. To fix this, all you have to do is choose the most appropriate voice and edit your document until you are using a consistent voice.

Where having a consistent voice becomes a real challenge is when a document is edited by a group, as would happen with a Google doc or with a Word doc with "Track Changes" enabled. When a document is being edited simultaneously by several people, the odds are that each person's edits will be written in their own voice.

Though group editing has its place, it should not be the method used to create the final draft. Instead, after the group is generally satisfied with the contents of the document, a single person should be designated to do the final editing to create the final draft. This final draft would then be submitted to the group for final approval. In this way, you get the benefits that come from collaborative editing, but also the consistency that comes from a single editor.

A common concern is figuring out how long the editing process should take, and for this there is no set answer. Ideally, the editing process should take as long as it needs to take to create a final draft that represents you, your colleagues, and your company as professionally as possible. Realistically, you have to look at how much time there is left between now, and when your writing is due, and do your best to make the most of that time.

The key is to not underestimate just how long editing may take. A first draft may only take a few days but getting to a final draft may take several weeks. If you are assigned the task of writing a document, be sure to take into account the time needed for both drafting and editing when you set expectations, as you don't want to run out of time and be forced to release an unedited draft that you know is not ready for publication.