Spit and Polish

Most beginning writers don’t bother polishing their work. Is it because they don’t know that they should or that they’re lazy? Most likely, it’s the former. Just like you, they’re eager to write great stories or articles and send them out to be published. But a novice’s eagerness is usually met with rejection—lots of it. Instead of giving up, rev up your determination and make things happen in your favor. To do this, you’ll need to polish your work.

The word polish originally meant to make something smooth and . In writing, polish can mean to improve or perfect or refine a piece of writing by getting rid of minor errors—errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure.

Polishing writing is much like polishing your shoes when your prepare for a special occasion. You polish your shoes because you want to look our best. And because you want your writing to be its best, you should polish it so that you make it as easy as possible for others to read it.

You can use two of your senses to see how well your writing is "working"—hearing and seeing. As you read, listen to see if your writing makes sense, if you’ve left out a word, or if you want to explain a bit more.

You can also read your writing aloud to someone else, such as a family member or a friend. Ask your listener to see if your story or article makes sense. Count on that person to hear what you can’t.

Professional writers often create their own list of trouble spots, typically a list that they use to guide their polishing. You'll want to create such a list for yourself. Are your sentences so long that they’re hard to read? Or perhaps so short that one sentence doesn’t seem very well connected to another? Do certain spelling words always seem to trip you up? Do you have difficulty with endings or beginnings?

Before you can begin polishing, you’ll need to proofread your piece. But before you do that, you need to revuiew the content of your piece. Don’t try to proofread your draft while you edit the content. Divide this into two separate procedures.

Start at the beginning and read your document through slowly, focusing on what you’re trying to say. Make sure your document makes sense as a whole, and that you’ve developed each point. When you’ve spent a lot of time writing a piece, it’s easy to get caught up in the flow of your work, but the human brain doesn’t read every word of longer pieces. Instead, it skims for meaning.

Does your article or story follow the stylistic conventions of the type of content you’re writing, such as the inverted pyramid for news articles? At this stage, focus on the message you’re trying to convey. If you’re having trouble reading for content errors, make an outline of the points you intend to make before you read your content. This is especially important if your piece contains historical information which you’re trying to present in chronological order.

Next, focus on fixing grammar, spelling, and awkward phrasing. To find even minuscule errors, read each part of your text separately by taking each sentence out of context. Make sure each one is grammatically correct.

During this phase of the process, look for incorrect punctuation, especially commas and quotation marks. Also, look for mixed up homophones like “there” and “their,” or “two,” “to” and “too.” And don’t’ forget to check for overused adverbs and passive voice.

Lastly, look through your piece and see if you can upgrade any of the words, especially replacing two words with a dynamic one.

One Plus One Doesn’t Always Equal Two

At some point in your writing career, you may have entertained the thought of collaborating with someone on a book or other writing project. Collaboration can take two forms—working with  another writer or working with someone who’s an expert in a particular subject area.

Writers, agents, and editors all feel strongly one way or the other about collaboration, depending on whether their own experiences with collaborators have been positive or negative.  Rule Number One: Consider what may lie ahead before you get involved.

If you collaborate with a friend, you can ruin your friendship. Or it can be the stimulating experience that keeps both of you working at top form. Looking at collaboration from a strictly business point of view, there are advantages—pooling resources, contacts, and efforts. However, you’ll also need to share the proceeds whether they’re good or bad. 

Before starting work on a collaboration project, draw up a contract specifying who will do what kind of work, how moneys are to be divided, and so on. You’ll both need to think out this agreement thoroughly. After all, it will be a legally binding agreement. If it’s for the long term, you should discuss it with your accountant, lawyer, or agent to help iron out any negative parts prior to signing. Be sure to include a buy-out or phase-out clause in case you or your partner have a change of heart.

A collaborative writing effort means two people agree before-hand what kind of contribution each will make to a given work. The problems aren't the same as those involved in ghostwriting for a non-writer—a scientist, a doctor, or any other professional—who wants to have his or her thoughts or discoveries published. But problems will crop up, even though the neither of you has have no inherent disagreement. Each is bound to react differently, for instance, to what an agent or editor or publisher says about a book, for instance—how it looks, what sort of publicity it gets, and so forth.

In most cases, a writer works individually on a piece, thus deciding what should or shouldn’t be included. In a collaboration, each partner will want his or her own say. And each will have more expertise in one job or another.

One, for example, may be better at research and writing the first draft while the other is better at editing, asking for clarification or amplification where needed, making suggestions, cleaning up the language. With two pairs of eyes looking over the manuscript, it should be in much better shape when you finally send it off to a publisher than if just one of you worked on it.

In this type of working arrangement, the second partner, the one not involved with writing the text first, approaches the manuscript cold, and will see and comprehend it as a reader would. If parts are confusing or there are voids, this partner will find them. Also, working with someone else, especially another writer, will force you and your partner to work to higher standards.

A different set of problems may arise when working with an expert in a given field. While the expert may know his or her subject matter, they may not be able to relay it clearly to the reader. As a writer, you’ll be in the best position to accomplish this. However, the expert partner may think they know how to write, based on the academic writing they learned in school. This can and often does create conflicts in writing style. Let’s face it, the style of writing you work with as a professional writer is often very different than what’s used by academics. You won’t be producing a thesis, but your partner may approach the project as if you are.

Before you make any final decision about collaborating, be certain you've evaluated your own most important needs. If your analysis shows that two heads are better than one, go for it. But if your intuition tells you that you may run into more problems than collaboration is worth, back off.