Have you been working on your piece for a while, but your creative juices seem to have dried up lately? It may be a good time to do a bit of editing. It can help you clear the deck to figure out what to augment and what to diminish. Then you can fix the newfound problems and move forward. But how do you get started?

Editing will require you to separate from your initial, creative self: the part that knows what you meant to say when you crafted the early drafts of your piece. You must now pretend you are seeing the piece for the first time.

Wearing your new hat, your first job is to scrutinize the big picture—from the perspective of one of your intended readers.

If you have trouble getting that hat to fit, recall other times in your life when you have adopted another person’s point of view. If you have ever acted in a play, done character imitations for your friends, or read lines of dialogue to a child from a storybook, you have some experience pretending to be someone else.

Follow these three steps to get your inner editor going: Continue reading →