Kelly Holmes's Reviews > The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself

Summary: An editor offers advice on how to edit your own writing.

Review: I loved the first half of this book for its practicality, but as it got less practical I lost interest. Example:

* Loved learning about how The Great Gatsby changed during the editing process
* Didn’t love reading about the entire history of book editing

One little gem was the author’s tips for gaining perspective on your work—techniques like editing in a different environment than where you wrote, changing the font when you read it back, hanging it up on a laundry line to look for big picture issues.

Even though I didn’t love the second half, the book was easy to get through, which isn’t always true of writing books. (As my shelf of 20+ unread writing books can attest.)

I’ll leave you with one of the practical tips that stuck with me:

Take care not to indiscriminately repeat a turn of phrase. Avoid, that is, overusing one particular sentence structure, such as, for example, a clause, then a colon, then a list. Single out the structure you unwittingly repeat, enter it in a notebook marked “patterns to break,” and make it the only thing you look for on one or two read-throughs. Hunt down your habit, and train your mind to flinch at it.