I write a lot, multiple hours a day every day of the week, factoring out all distractions. The thing is, I primarily write for myself. I don’t do journalling or list-making for productivity, I mean real writing. The thing is that I write it for myself, so while I am very good at output, I never really have had a reason to ‘edit’ in a real sense because I was never writing with the intention of publishing anything.
However, I decided that me starting a Substack or something like that has been long overdue. I have plenty on philosophy-adjacent topics that I want to write about and I feel knowledgeable enough to write about. As I started actually editing my writing, I realize that I am not a very good editor. I might be a bad writer by extent, but I would say that I know precisely what I want to see in my writing, but as far as the process for writing for others goes, I am terrible at writing/editing in that sense.
I also have come to the conclusion that they are probably two very different skill sets. If you are not born a good writer, in some sense, you are not going to have anything good to write about and no amount of good editing will save you. But if you do have stories/ideas worth reading about, you better become an editor to equal proportion. Something like that. IDK, what would I know about it.
Anyways, I have been developing a methodology for editing my writing. The main ‘breakthrough’ is that now I have a feedback loop so to say, something I feel like I am making progress by means of. I don’t really feel like going through it because, first of all, I do not have anything published to my Substack yet to show for, and secondly, it is probably nothing unique. But, the main thing I wanted to say in this post is that I came to the realization that my lack of editing is making my writing unpalatable, and then I came up with a methodology for editing that has been giving me clarity.
Anyways, what do you guys think of the relationship between writing and editing?