The Art of Editing Without Losing Your Soul

I spent the Fourth of July weekend at my mountain property, soaking in the quiet. We visited the Little Grand Canyon, a spectacular hidden gem in Utah, and I wasted hours lolling around, staring at the sky. It was supposed to be a decompression weekend.

Did I decompress? Not really.

Because I knew what waited for me when I got home: The final edit of Book Four.

I don’t edit while I write. Most of my books are drafted in a relaxed state—on my phone in the Notes app or in Reedsy. Never MS Word. I can’t have distractions like editing suggestions popping up while I’m trying to stay in the flow.

But when it’s time to edit, I open Grammarly or load the document in Word, close my eyes, and wait for the suggestions to appear.

547. 

Are you serious? Do I even know how to write?

The Em Dash Problem

I totally agree!

I begin by removing em dashes I don’t absolutely need—annoyed, because now I have to prove I’m not using AI. I love em dashes. I always have. They feel special, and anytime I hit a double dash to connect two thoughts or ideas, it feels like finding the missing piece in a 5,000‑piece puzzle. A tiny light bulb moment.

Editing Is a Slippery Slope

How much editing is truly necessary? In college, I learned that fiction breaks rules all the time. Still, clear and concise language makes for easier reading.

I love passive voice. I love the classics—Jane Eyre, where Charlotte Brontë used it liberally. But I understand why we avoid it today. Fewer words often mean better clarity.

Still, sometimes I look at a suggestion and think: Nope. I like my way better.

The Demoralizing Bits

Keep the good vibes coming

I have created a style guide to remind me of my pitfalls: Too many feel, felt, feels, feeling. (Show, not tell, Tanya!) Too many fillers like even, just, maybe.  Too many I know, and I get it. I write like I talk, but most informal jargon is already implied in dialogue. I also maintain a formatting guide. I worked in Quality Assurance at a printing company for five years, so I can spot double spaces or differences in headers. This brings out my anal streak, but I'm good with it.

My Editing Survival List

1. Create Versions of Everything

Red is added, green is removed

Word’s compare tool is a lifesaver. I often revert to my original instinctive phrasing. Flow matters. Something can seem “better” until you read the whole chapter. I cannot tell you how many times I was advised to remove an adverb and I sneak it back in there anyway. (Sometimes, you really need to say "really.")

2. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

A lot of edits don’t change meaning. If a best‑practice rule exists in popular fiction, I usually follow it—even if I have to change it eight hundred times.

3. Be Consistent

Technical writing taught me this: consistency becomes style. Even if it’s “wrong,” consistency evolves into your signature. Rules are made to be broken and often make for truly creative writing.

This is my middle name

4. Keep It Stupid Simple

English has long been treated as a measure of intelligence. I remember feeling so special in grade school when I made it into advanced reading class—then devastated when I didn’t qualify the next year. That pseudo‑intellectualism is vainglorious. I keep my writing plain and easy to read without sacrificing my natural voice.

5. Go Prosaic

Songs hidden in a story are the best kind

I was a songwriter before I was an author. Rhythm and rhyme live in my bones. I find ways of imbuing this into my novels. Writing sex scenes feels like writing songs. Fluid, lyrical, and filled with a contrast of vulgarity and ambiguity. I love alliteration. I use it sparingly, but joyfully.

6. Split Tasks

Don’t edit everything at once. It's too much like multitasking. Edits fall into different camps, so I break them into batches. It means reading my book a dozen times, but I miss far less.

7. Preserve Your Soul

DON'T FORGET!

Don’t over‑control your prose. I’ve edited stories so much they lost their voice. Never again. Words need life. Your soul is the life of your writing. Never sacrifice it for experts, algorithms, or audience expectations. Your words will find the readers who love them.

That’s my two cents. Now, it's back to deliberating over split infinitives, scads of dreaded adverbs, and every single Oxford comma (I use them at work, so they are instinctive now, and it is almost impossible to delete them all!) This is just a taste of the editing process. There's a whole lot more, but each time I get better and more efficient. Less is more.

Books are snapshots of who you are at that moment in your life. You will evolve, and your writing will evolve. The stories you write today may pale in comparison to the ones you’ll write years from now. But that’s the beauty of the craft. And beauty should always be preserved.