The last step of the Make Your Story Happen How-To Guide: Perfect
In order to make it to this step, you should have gone through the previous four. Go back and revisit them, if you need:
Don’t worry about perfecting your work until you’ve gone through the previous steps. Doing that is akin to, as Larry the Cable Guy might say, wiping before you to poop.
Editing
This stage is where you edit. Check your grammar, mechanics, and spelling.
Error-free writing requires more than just using good grammar and gettin’ all the words right. You must also use correct mechanics of writing.
The mechanics of writing specifies the established conventions for words that you use in your work. Grammar reflects the forms of words and their relationships within a sentence. For instance, if you put an apostrophe in a plural word (“Create two file’s”), you have made a mistake in the mechanics of writing, not grammar.
Here is where you’ll pay attention to: Capitalization; Contractions; Gerunds and Participles; Numbers and Numerals; Pronouns; Technical Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Units of Measurement; and Punctuation.
I found a great guide on the Mechanics of Writing here.
Making Your Story Its Best
The editing stage is where you don’t focus on yourself or the reader. The editing stage is where you look at your work itself & make it as beautiful as possible.
After writing ‘The Lightbulb Moment’, I felt completely purged of that idea. It was no longer just the story in my head. It was there in front of me—I was looking right at it. It was its own… thing. It was a thing I had created, and I wanted it to be its best before I sent it into the world.
That’s editing.
If you’re interested in publishing your work, I’ve got something for that. Contact me.
This writing guide reflects my ‘All In’ philosophy,
which you can learn more about here.
More writing tips at the Purdue Writing Lab site.