Editing....

Everything I read about writing fiction treats editing as a necessary chore. The books I've read, the other authors I've heard speak, have all advised something along the lines of, "You're going to hate editing your work, but do it anyway. You have to".

Honestly, and maybe this is because I'm a complete oddball in just about every other facet of my life, I love editing. I'm now going through Digilife AGAIN, editing and cleaning stuff up that I don't like. It seems that I find something new to correct every time I go through something I've written.

This latest go round I've focused on two things. First, getting rid of the word "just", particularly in dialogue. I overuse the word for some reason. For instance, that last sentence in Digilife would have read: "I just overuse the word for some reason". Thankfully, whether with MS Word or Open Office, find and replace/delete is easy.

The other thing, and this one is a bitch, is removing passive voice sections. I've never gotten the hang of it. I always seem to write, "He was staring" rather than "He stared".

In any case, I'm pretty sure this means I'm a self-loathing masochist, but what are you gonna do?