More tips for editing

As I said last time, I believe that everyone has the potential to be an awesome editor of their own work!

It’s sometimes helpful to see how editing is an integral part of the process for all writers, even the most celebrated! There are some wonderful digital archives online where you can see how writers develop their work through painstaking drafting and redrafting. Check out Tony Harrison’s Them & [uz] (Special Collections, University of Leeds), Bernadine Evaristo on junking a novel, writing a poem and finding form (British Library Archives & Manusripts) and Romesh Gunesekera’s original drafts (the South Asian Diaspora Arts Archive).

I always love working with writers on their work, so if you ever fancy a fresh pair of eyes on your poems or fiction then do check out my mentoring and events pages!

In the meantime, as promised, here are my next five tips for editing your poems!

1. Look at the form of your poem. How is this working with the effect you want the poem to achieve? Have you used stanzas? Can you give your poem more space to ‘breathe’? Think about how you might play with the white space on the page by experimenting with stanzas, spacing and form. Or how you might intensify or compress the meaning by getting rid of stanza breaks or changing the length of lines.
2. Talking of lines. How do the lines of your poems end? Do they end with strong words? How might the line-ending words tell the story of your poem? Can you play with the reader’s expectations by creating run-on lines, or ending the lines with different words?
3. Look again at the language in your poem. Is every single word pulling its weight? Go through your draft and consider deleting adverbs (quickly, gently etc) and adjectives (warm, beautiful etc.) Do you need them all? Keep only the strongest and most essential. Are there any clichés? Is the language fresh? Try to cut any ‘tired’ language and replace.
4. Think about any use of rhyme in your poem? How does this work? Is it very mechanical or uniform? Can you shake this up a bit, or add some rhymes within a line to speed up the pace/ intensity?
5. Finally for today, have another look at your title. How is this working? Does your title add an extra layer to your poem, or offer a key to the meaning? What would happen if you changed the title? Experiment with different titles and notice what happens to your poem.

That’s it for today! Happy editing and I’ll be back soon with more!