Editorial Notes = clarifying information, additional insight, annotations

Hiya Reader,

I have no idea how this started, but in my family, my then-teenagers started to falsely-on-purpose "correct" any spoken usage of less to fewer and vice versa.

"Use a little less flour." Response: "Fewer flour."

"Fewer leaves to rake than last week." Response: "Less leaves."

This ridiculousness went on for so many years that I now, genuinely, have to stop and think which word is actually correct. (Fewer is used for countable quantities; less for the uncountable.) My children have corrupted me for life! And worse, they think it's hilarious!

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Example of the Week

Sometimes this is a good example—or a great one. Sometimes this is a bad example—or just a funny blooper. Sometimes a combination. You never know.

From Leslie Jamison's memoir Splinters:

"Some writers hate revision, but I've always appreciated its clarifying adrenaline. It's like plunging into a cold lake, or a basement plunge pool. A challenge. A scouring. Not comfortable, but exhilarating. There's a visceral buzz that comes from removing an unnecessary sentence from a draft. In its absence, everything else is crisper, starker, more alive."

Are you putting some muscle into scouring your draft for a new, crisp life?

Actionable Tip of the Week

A trick to add to your self-editing toolbox right now!

You've just finished your manuscript, short story, essay, grocery list, or whatever it is and the last thing you want to do is read through it again with a fine-tooth comb, hunting for misplaced commas or spotting that you used "really" 47 times in the third paragraph or identifying that you messed up the order so Aunt Bertha’s prison sentence appears before readers know there’s been a crime.

I get it. There's an entire industry of people who will gladly take your money to do this tedious work for you. And as an editor, I am not knocking the importance of getting outside editing services! Professional services (and please, for the love of all things holy, do your homework here and hire a genuine professional) should come after you've done your own intensive work, after you've already caught the obvious problems, after you've already pushed yourself to make every page as strong as you can make it. Think of professional editing as the final polish, not the first pass.

But this newsletter is devoted to self-editing. And this initial hard work might be the most important part of your development as a writer.

Nobody is ever going to care about your work the way you do. Not your critique partner, not your editor, not even your mom who thinks everything you write is brilliant. When you force yourself to examine every sentence, every word choice, every punctuation mark, something magical happens. You start to see patterns in your own bad habits that you'd never notice otherwise. Maybe you lean too hard on passive voice when you're tired. Maybe you have a thing for unnecessary adverbs. Maybe you're actually not as clear as you think you are in explaining what's happening in that crucial scene.

The thing about outsourcing your revision process too early is that you rob yourself of the friction that creates growth. It's like hiring someone to go to the gym for you and expecting to get stronger. When you sit with your own messy draft, when you wrestle with that paragraph that isn't quite working, when you realize you've spelled your character's name three different ways, that's not wasted time. That's you getting your reps in. That's how you develop an ear for rhythm, a sense for pacing, an instinct for what works and what doesn't.

Plus, let's be honest about what happens when you skip this step. You send your work out into the world without really knowing it inside and out, and inevitably someone points out something you should have caught. Not just typos (though yes, those too: who among us has not found a typo immediately after hitting send?) but bigger issues with logic, consistency, or clarity. And then you feel like an idiot because you realize you never actually read the whole thing carefully enough to notice that your protagonist leaves the house in chapter seven but somehow arrives back home without ever leaving in the first place. Embarrassing.

The deeper you get into your own work during revision, the more you see how your opening connects to your ending. You notice the threads you dropped or the ones you're pulling too hard. You catch yourself explaining things that should be shown or showing things that would work better as a quick tell. These aren't lessons someone else can learn for you. They're earned through the uncomfortable process of confronting your own work with honest eyes.

The writers who get better at self-editing — which means, the writers who get better at writing — are not the ones who can't wait to hand off their work and wash their hands of it. They're the ones who dig in, who aren't afraid to be bored, who understand that writing isn't just about getting a certain number of words on the page.

Reader Question of the Week

Donna wrote: I'm writing a memoir, but there are some important things I just don't remember. What's the best way to handle this?

Donna! Honesty is exceptionally important in memoir. But it doesn't mean you have to have perfect recall for it to be authentic and meaningful. While memory gaps are common, we need to be transparent. with the uncertainty when it occurs. "I remember it this way" or "As I recall." Depending on the topic, research (which can mean just talking to family members) might work. You could consider composite scenes or acknowledgement that you've compressed time or combined similar events for narrative flow, information that could even come in an author's note, outside the narrative. You can imagine, hypothesize, try the "perhapsing" technique.

And if something is truly gone from your memory? You could address that absence itself.

All of these approaches work as long as you remain clear and straightforward about what you're doing.

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Link of the Week

​When you've done everything you can and you're really ready for a professional editor, you know what to do!

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Thanks for reading!

~Helene, your writing sherpa