We understand how annoying editing can be for a writer. Just as many writers love editing, many do not and procrastinate at every opportunity. Social media is a killer for Jayne Thornber. She’d rather do anything other than edit, but all writers must learn the craft. Successful authors can outsource editing, but you will still have to make the edits an editor suggests.
And that’s the rub. There are two quotes that we love.
“Just 5 minutes more.” Give yourself five minutes on the task. Most days, you are going to edit one or two sentences in five minutes, which is a long way from a timely edit. However, the magic of these five minutes is that five minutes grows to ten, to twenty and then to thirty minutes, and before you know it, you need to stop because the quality of your work is decreasing. Many years ago, a work colleague gave us this advice, so thanks, Tim King, you rock!
“You can’t boil the ocean.” That is true, but when Jayne Thornber shared this with her friend, the friend responded, “Yep, you can, one kettle at a time.” And whilst scientifically, by the time you boil ten kettles, the first kettle is back to being “water temperature”, Jayne chooses to take this quote and say, if she has enough kettles, she can make headway, boiling kettles one at a time. Thanks, Lela Smith for this quote, even if it was from a friend of yours and you couldn’t remember which one.
When our authors struggle with editing, we use these quotes.
Fiery Publishing - home to books by KJ Matthews & Jayne Thornber 