A Dispatch for Members: How I Edit

Editing is where most of the writing happens, and almost nobody wants to talk about it. Drafting is private and publishing is public; editing is the long corridor between, and I spend most of my working life in it.

This is a free preview of how I work through a piece — the first of three passes.

Pass one: cut

Before I touch a single word I read the whole draft aloud and mark every place my voice drops or my breath runs out. Those are the sentences that want cutting, and they usually want cutting in half.