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.

Get Into the Writing Habit

Everyone has habits—both good and bad. Some say we’re creatures of habit. It’s human nature. In fact, all mammals are. In the animal world, it’s called instinct, but for us humans it’s called habit. Most people concentrate on their bad habits. But everyone has some good habits, too. Which you have more of is up to you.

Developing good writing habits takes time and discipline. It also takes some determination and dedication. So how do you develop good writing habits?

First start by finding time to write. Not just here and there in your busy weekly schedule, but a specific times. You don’t need a lot of time, just a reasonable amount, say an hour or two, several times a week. If you use the time you set aside to write productively, you’ll get a lot done. If you wile away that time daydreaming about your first novel, you won’t get anything done.

Begin by making a schedule for yourself. Lay out everything you do in a week, including relaxation time and meals, plus employment if you work at a full-time job. Look to see if there’s any time left. Don’t cut into your relaxation time, but look carefully at how much time you spend at meals. You’ll soon discover that you can easily set aside an hour or two to dedicate to writing.

The trick is to stick to your writing schedule. The time you’ve set aside doesn’t have to be spent actually writing. You could be doing research or editing. But you should be doing some sort of writing-related activity.

Like physical exercise, writing often isn’t a lot of fun while you’re doing it. The key is to make it enjoyable. Begin by writing about subjects that interest you—subjects that you’re passionate about. Your passion will produce the words.

Some writers literally go straight from their bed to their computer the first thing in the morning. For some working full-time at another job, this means getting up with the roosters. But even if you’re a full-time writer, starting the first thing in the morning is a good habit. And any distraction that takes them away from their work kills it. Once you get into the rhythm of writing, the material will flow from your fingertips, almost like magic.

To get yourself into a good writing habit, start by setting aside a designated time to write, each day or on selected days, according to your schedule. Try, if possible to set aside the same time each day, so that your mind will get used to delving into writing problems at that time. Many fiction writers set a number of words to write each day. Non-fiction writers, on the other hand, usually set a certain number of pages to write at each session.

Another good habit to develop is proofreading. With spell-checkers and grammar assists, too many beginning writers fail to do careful proofreading of their work before anyone else sees it. Set up a routine of sifting through your work. First proofread it by reading it from the bottom to the top and from right to left to throw our brain off. This will allow you to see mistakes you might otherwise miss.

Follow proofreading with polishing. Nothing says amateur like a piece that hasn’t been carefully polished. During this process, you’ll delete things that don’t fit, tighten up sentences, take out wordy phrases, and eliminate repetition.

By developing these good habits, your writing will go forward. And the more you do it, the more successful you’ll become at it.