Humbled By Edits

Some people hate edits, but I love them. I find my writing improves every time my work goes through the editing process. When I first started writing, I assumed my years of education and work as a healthcare professional gave me a pretty good handle on how to write. After all, I had to write some lengthy technical papers to earn my degrees. Working in healthcare, I've written thousands of chart notes that must clearly convey information from the visit and outline a plan of action. However, the first time I got edits back, I learned this experience did not lend itself well to how the average person likes to read. I found out three valuable things about my writing.

Relax!

My expertise in writing high-level healthcare information and chart notes that satisfied insurance requirements sounded a bit stiff and not engaging for the average reader. A look at the readability scores with my early writing backs up this little piece of knowledge. Have you ever seen a readability score in the negative numbers? I have! I've been told, "Just write in your natural voice." Um, yeah. What if my natural voice is a bit nerdy? The best advice I got with this was to write like I talk to my patients. That helped me find a more conversational tone.  I do better these days by staying mindful of finding the right tone to engage the reader and not sound too high falutin.

That. Yes, that.

This one wasn't new, but a gentle reminder. For years I've known that I use the word "that" too much. Like, waaaay too much. So much so that I passed my little "that" habit on to my daughter, and I still find the word when editing her school papers. I've spent many moons trying to eliminate this habit. Since I now write routinely, I am more mindful of word selection during my drafting. And, just to be safe, a simple word search during my editing helps me to clean up this little habit of any strays "that" I missed.

Passive voice.

When I first started writing, I thought I understood passive voice. It turns out I only sort of understood passive voice. Passive voice uses the "to be" verb form (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been). It took a little more effort on my part to clean up and begin using an active voice. Thankfully, I found some helpful tools to guide me with this. Now, put out a cleaner copy.

Edits are humbling but valuable. Using edits as a learning tool to improve my writing has made me a better writer. I consider myself a lifetime learner, so keep bringing on those edits!