What does editing actually look like?

Hey Grinders. I wanted to share something with you that I don't see enough of in the writing world and it looks like this:

I'm sure you recognize it and it's probably from your dreaded days in high school or college. The reason I post this is because as writers we are at a huge learning disadvantage when we work. We only see the most polished work of our favorite authors and almost never do we see the first version. I wish writers would share more first drafts and more edited copies to help us learn. 

My edits aren't perfect and I am no great writer or editor but I am a writer and editor who is willing to take the risk and post a work in progress. 

This exercise may help you and it might not but it's important to remind ourselves that we need to edit before we can share our work. It's one thing to wing a Twitter update or rush through a blog post but your primary writing should have the first round of polish done by the author. 

It will help friends who read your work and it will helps editors who look at your work to not waste time fixing simple errors you can find for them. In turn it will save you money and time when you publish. 

I also want to say that this edit you see is four of the twenty one pages of the story that I had edited before and I still found errors. No one writes a perfect first draft and if they say they do I promise they're lying. 

My challenge for you is to take a piece you wrote recently but haven't looked at in atleast a few weeks and run through it and see what you come up with. Let me know how it goes. 

Please know that grinding your words means to take time to edit too. You will get better from doing it. 

Keep up the grind.