Hi Reader,

The art of editing lies in understanding your own vision. It's as simple, and as complicated, as that.

As I write this newsletter, it’s Monday evening. I’ve spent the last three hours in my podcast editing software, where I’m wrestling with a mountain of content.

It was a delightful recording session—an hour and forty minutes of passionate conversation between a writer and two editors.

It will become a delightful episode—an hour(ish) of focused insight honed into its most engaging listen.

The bridge between those two?

That’s the work of editing.

When I waltzed into the episode three hours ago, I was confident. I had a few specific changes in mind, but mostly, I had a general sense of what I wanted to create.

The longer I spent in the audio files, though, the more I became aware of just how much content I have on my hands.

There's tons of good stuff here. But the key is:

• Some of it is good stuff that’s right on topic with what I want for this episode.
• Some of it is good stuff that's adjacent to the topic.
• And some of it is good stuff that's not really on this topic, although it’s perfect for a different topic.

It’s all good stuff. I could leave every bit of it in, because it was fun to make and I see the value in every second.

But that version of the episode would not convey to you, my listener, the precise ideas I want you to hear in their sharpest, clearest form.

Gradually, I realized that the most important editing task before me is not audio cleanup, or shortening long pauses, or cutting crosstalk.

In fact, the most important task before me is one I thought I’d already accomplished.

The most important task, the one that every other decision hinges on, is this:

I must get really clear about what I want this episode to be.

Every time I get confused, or overwhelmed, or stuck—

(and after three hours, I was coming dangerously close to headdesking)

—every time editing is hard, it is because I do not fully understand my own vision.

Make no mistake: I’ve had vision from the very start. That’s how I knew which guests to invite into the conversation. It’s how I was able to gather so much good content that’s either directly on topic or closely adjacent to it.

(And it’s why I thought I’d already accomplished the task of clarifying my vision.)

But the vision I started with is too fuzzy to guide me now. It was inspiration, a vague sense of direction, a deliberate exploration of an open-ended idea.

That level of vision is perfect for first drafts, for gathering content, creating raw material out of nothing.

But now that I’m in the second draft stage, my task is different.

Now that I have content, my task is to hone it, shape it, refine it into its tightest, most powerful form.

And to do that, I need something clearer, sharper, more specific than the inspiration I began with.

In order to figure out what to do with all this content, I must return to my fuzzy vision and sharpen it into crystal clarity.

I must get really clear about what I want this episode to be.

I’ve paused my podcast editing to write you this newsletter so I can show you:

This process is exactly the same as the process of editing a novel.

You walk into the first draft with vision, inspiration, a wealth of ideas.

You write tens of thousands of words and create a mountain of content. Some of it’s spot-on; some of it is a little off-topic but pretty close; and some of it stumbles into ideas that will be great for other stories, but that don’t quite fit into this one.

You sit down to edit the second draft with a few changes already in mind.

But as the sheer volume of content unfolds before you, you begin to feel . . .

. . . lost.

. . . overwhelmed.

. . . tempted to keep every word exactly as-is, and also to throw every word into the trash and start something entirely different.

This is because the vision you had at the start is not clear and sharp enough to guide you now.

In order to figure out what to do with all your words, you need to get really clear about what you want your story to be.

Once you have a clear vision, editing doesn’t become easy, necessarily. It’s still a really big creative challenge.

I still have a hundred minutes of content to sift through. You still have a hundred thousand words.

But it becomes possible, and straightforward, and inspiring. Each choice you make becomes not a shot in the dark, but a deliberate, meaningful, purposeful change that will bring you measurably closer to the story you envision.

So if you’re feeling lost in your mountain of manuscript, take a step back.

Ask yourself: What do you want this story to be?

​What’s it really about?​

And if you’d like some support to help you answer that question, consider joining me in Story Clarity.

I’ll just be over here texting my editor buddies like this . . .

Happy editing,

Alice