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After writing a few new stories, I have to edit them. This is easily the hardest part of writing. Coming up with ideas is easy. There are nearly infinite ideas that other people haven’t worked on, nearly infinite ways to remix the ones that they have, and nearly infinite ways to tell a story based on these ideas. So, yeah, ideas are easy.

Writing a first line is pretty easy. Start somewhere, come up with an opening line that you think would make a reader want to continue reading, and then write it down. Easy.

Writing a last line is pretty easy. Think of something that summarizes your thoughts and feelings on the story and write that down.

Now write all the stuff that goes between that first line and the last one.

All of this writing stuff is easy.

Now, make it not terrible. That’s editing and it’s horrifically difficult. Does this word go here, or here? Does this feeling come across in this paragraph? If someone who isn’t me read it, would they think that same feeling came across in that paragraph? Do we need two sentences or thirty seven? Is all of this actually terrible and am I a terrible writer?

If you ever wanted to ask yourself any or all of those questions, maybe give editing a story a shot.

Anyway, enough of this diversion. Back to editing.