10 Ways to Keep Your Focus While You Edit

Editing is one of those things that will either feel like swimming with dolphins through a rainbow sea or trudging with Artax through the Swamp of Sadness. It can be horribly demoralizing watching your baby sink to the depths of what looks like depravity. You're editing and suddenly you think, "This is awful. Why am I bothering?" or "What was I thinking?" or "This is driving me crazy, and I wrote it! What will a reader think?"

With every negative thought, your project looks like it's sinking deeper and deeper into that pile of mud. But you've got to remember (spoiler alert): At the end of the movie, Atreyu is riding happily across a meadow on the back of his beloved Artax. You know why? Because he didn't give up. To that end, I've compiled a happy little list of ways to keep you from giving up when it feels like you just can't go any further with this $%*#@ editing process.

The Beauty of the Bullet Point

Jane Yolen rocks. 

You are a writer. You have goals. For instance, you have committed to writing a:

• Blog post
• Short Story
• Long Story
• Magazine Article
• Pretty much anything with a deadline (either real or imagined)

You are aware, above all, that writers write, so you know you need to get started. But there's all kinds of things preventing you from doing so.

Blogging For Business: Five Writing Prompts To Get Started

You business bloggers are one of the most hard-working types of writers I know, but you rarely get that credit. You're choosing to write even when writing doesn't necessarily come naturally to you, and that takes discipline. Interested in getting started?

Content marketing is, in my humble opinion, the very best kind of marketing, because you're sharing something real. It's not a flier on your car or doorknob begging potential customers to buy something. That doesn't work anymore. Today's audiences can smell a sales pitch a mile away, and we avoid them like the plague.