How To Cut Off Your Inner Editor

Have you ever written a story, blog post, or any other piece of writing, and even after spending hours crafting your prose, you keep combing through your words over and over and over again?

How do you know when enough is enough? How do you know when your best efforts are okay? How do you know when you can give yourself a pat on the back, tell yourself “Good job,” and move on to the next thing?

The other day, I wrote a post asking people to consider whether they had editor’s brain or writer’s brain. Boy did I ever touch a nerve! Few posts have generated as many comments. It was nice to hear that I was in good company. But I also quickly realized after reading the comments after the post that I needed to revisit the topic and provide more advice on how to know when to quit and call the job done.

Quite frankly, this is something I’ve struggled with most of my life. I have a perfectionist streak that has been with me from the very beginning. It made me a good student, and it helped earn me some great editing assignments over the years. But eventually at some point in the editing process, you have to step back and say enough is enough. At some point, you just have to call it done.

But it sure is hard to retrain the brain, is it not?

I was one of those students who always bumped up against my term paper deadlines. Not because I procrastinated on starting the assignment, but because I often wrote, rewrote, and rewrote what I’d already written. It was the same impulse that sometimes earned me glares from newsroom editors and copy desks as I pushed against my evening deadlines. And it’s the same reason why even now when I edit a book, I sometimes send the edited manuscript back to the publishing company at the last minute (because I’ve continued to comb, and comb, and recomb again).

Underlying these tendencies is the belief that a good job can always be better, that there’s a mistake somewhere that I didn’t catch the first, second, or third time, and that there’s a better word choice and turn of phrase that I just haven’t thought of or discovered yet.

Several years ago, one of my mentors gave me a challenge. She said something along these lines: “Jenny, this week, I want you to pick one thing on your to-do list. Something that’s important but not top priority. And I want you to decide that you’re going to shoot for “good enough” and not perfect.”

I think this was one of those pieces of advice that I agreed with in theory at the time, but that seemed impossibly difficult when it was time to execute it. I can offer up the same advice to you, but I know that—like me—you’ll probably nod your head here and struggle later when you try to figure out which assignment is simply good enough. Based on my observation, writers and editors seem to have this problem in high numbers. On the one hand, it makes us good at what we do because we’re so persnickety and particular about word choices and our punctuation. On the other hand, this tendency can be akin to locking your door, walking to your car, walking back upstairs to make sure the door is locked, then walking back out to the car, and doing it all over again. Maybe even multiple times.

As I said above, I still struggle with this tendency. But there are a few things that have helped me turn off my inner editor when it’s time to quit or when I seem to be doing the editorial equivalent of locking the door and rechecking it multiple times.

I had to do this today, in fact. I read and re-read a press release that I had to send out to multiple news organizations. I had to send the press release out today, and I continued to read and reread it for errors up until it was time to duck into my next meeting.

And that leads me to my first tip:

1) Give yourself a deadline. If you know that you have to wrap up your editing by a certain day or time, you’ll eventually be forced to let go of the assignment and move on to the next thing. But in the absence of a deadline, you’ll probably keep polishing and polishing until there’s nothing left to polish anymore. Am I right? If there’s no built-in deadline for your assignment, create one and then promise yourself some kind of reward after you wrap up the project.

2) Walk away! On some level, I usually know when I’m stuck in an editing loop. I know when I’m there because I usually feel like I’ve disappeared into a vortex and have combed and recombed through the same paragraph multiple times. When I reach this point, sometimes the only thing I can do is just walk away or put the assignment down for the rest of the day. Or simply switch tasks for a while.

3) Get your blood pumping. I am an exercise convert, and in addition to keeping me physically healthy, it also helps me balance out the rest of my life. So if I’m needing to let go of an assignment or just need a break, sometimes time on the treadmill or a walk out in the woods can help reset the brain. And sometimes, that’s a good thing.

4) Pass it on. Even editors need editors sometimes. And sometimes I can look at a story or manuscript for so long that the words hardly make sense anymore. The best thing you can do sometimes is pass the assignment onto the next person or a trusted friend and have them read over your work.

So do have you have any tips for fellow freelancers? How do you turn off your inner editor? Drop me a line and tell me about it!

Photo credit: Rat Phlegm (Flickr)