Editing With a Machete

When a scalpel just won’t do.

Editing. Ugh. I’ll say it again…EDITING. Double-ugh. I can truly say that editing is NOT on my list of super-cool and fun things to do before publishing an article.

To me, writing is the fun part, especially when you get into a sweet rhythm, the words flowing, your groove is grooving…you’re feeling it, oh yeah, you’re feeling it.

You get done writing in Evernote. 
You run the article through Grammarly. 
You copy/paste it into Medium. 
You choose a bomb-diggity Feature Image from Pixabay and create your image in Pablo. 
You add a few more photos from Unsplash.

And then it begins…

https://media.giphy.com/media/Bp5dwyOW9BwbK/giphy.gif

You article lays there. No pulse. No breathing. Not a smidgeon of signs of life. Only one thing to do to bring your creation to life:

Time to Operate!

Using your scalpel, you make a few, articulate and delicate changes. Your changes do nothing to bring your article to life. It continues lying there, a heap of inanimate blocks of text.

Raising your hands, you cry out, “WHY?” Your face slumps into your hands as your ego questions your skills (you’re a little dramatic, don’t you think?).

Collecting yourself — after all, you are a professional — you realize that among all this work, all of this thoughtful preparation, all of your canvassing here and there to pull together the needed verbiage to make your creation complete, you simply have too many parts.

You have more than you need, though some of the parts are brilliant. On their own, the parts are deserving of praise and applause, but people aren’t here to view a single part, they are here to view the whole creature, and the extra part, though as beautiful as it is, just doesn’t belong. What should you do?

Looking at the nurse, you confidently say, “Hand me the machete.”

Confused, she repeats your request, “The machete, doctor? Are you sure? That seems a little extreme in this case. Wouldn’t you like another attempt with the scalpel?”

Furrowing your brow, you demand, “Nurse, give me the machete! I’m trying to save this article’s life!”

The nurse hands you the machete and you skillfully remove the excess paragraph from your article. You step back slowly and look proudly at your results. Genius.

With a small shake your article sputters to life, a strong pulse begins to race and color flows through its veins.

It’s ALIVE!

The world needs to see your creation. The world deserves to see the clever work of such an amazing surgeon.

Your willingness to make drastic decisions and perform an article-saving surgical procedure — using unconventional methods — is worthy of clapping.

For your work, some will clap for you. Some will event openly comment on your work. Well done. You deserve accolades for seeing your article through to the end and hitting PUBLISH.

Unfortunately, there is no time to rest on the merits of your success. You must return to the operating room. Another patient awaits!