The Big Fresh April 2, 2016 Editing with a Writer’s Eyes

So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.
  Dr. Seuss

Top Chef  is a reality cooking show in which a group of talented, eager chefs are chosen to compete against one another to develop and create the most tasty and beautiful dishes within a designated budget and time frame.

This season, one of my favorite competitors was Karen, who had proven to be a spunky, imaginative, and confident chef. On a recent episode, though, she was facing the possibility of elimination with her dish, “Soba Noodles in Mushroom Dashi Broth With Wagyu Beef and Pickled Mushrooms.”  The title itself was a lot to wrap the mind around, and the judges all agreed that it was too complicated. There were too many components, too many flavor profiles, too many ingredients. “You should have stopped yourself and said, ‘I’m done now,’“ a judge told her.

“I wish I’d had one hour less to cook,” Karen admitted—something never said on Top Chef.

The judge agreed, telling her, “You know… it’s a chef’s job to edit yourself.”

There’s a correlation here with how we can approach teaching our students about editing. I’m not talking about fixing-mistakes editing. I’m referring to the editing that can make wordy, complicated pieces of writing simpler and easier to understand.

I knew nothing about this as an emerging writer in middle school and high school. I figured out early on that I’d get an automatic A if I just wrote more than everyone else. The teacher wanted two pages?  I turned in three. The teacher wanted three pages? I turned in five. It worked, because they couldn’t bear to tell me that my writing was rambling, or even boring. Of course not!  I’d worked so hard! Look—so many words!  So many pieces and parts!

It’s understandable. No teacher wants to stifle a writer’s enthusiasm and zest for creation. But when working with eager writers, we can mistake volume and length for success. We praise writers who turn in dense, lengthy pieces because we’re so happy we don’t have to drag the words out of them, like we have to do with our reluctant writers. But I’m not sure that’s wise.

It took me many years to learn to cut out whatever is irrelevant in a piece of writing. It’s hard. It’s emotional—like destroying something you care about. It feels risky and wrong to highlight a section of words and then just delete it.

But it’s a good skill to have.

Just as we work to motivate and encourage our reluctant writers, so too should we rein in our most enthusiastic ones. We can tell them when it’s okay to remove whole sentences—indeed, whole paragraphs, sections, and pages—if they wander off the focus and main topic. Emerging writers need the permission and guidance to learn how to eliminate what doesn’t contribute meaningfully to a piece of writing.

After all, it’s a writer’s job to edit oneself.

And it’s a teacher’s job to teach a writer to edit oneself.

This week we look at editing with a writer’s eyes, for both quality and quantity. Plus more as always — enjoy!

Jennifer Schwanke

Contributor, Choice Literacy

Jennifer Schwanke taught middle school language arts for six years before moving into administration at both the middle school and elementary level. She enjoys thinking of more effective ways to present literacy to students at these vulnerable ages. You can follow her latest thinking on literacy and leadership on her blog.

Free for All