Stitch Your Fragments

Writing sometimes comes as a free-flowing stream of connected thought.  I often am merely speaking through my fingertips, recording the words I would be saying if it were a spoken conversation.  And sometimes there are long pauses between thoughts.  Those breaks allow for shifts in mindset, which affects the writing.

Pronoun usage can often be lax.  When I talk about writers, for example, I can easily shift between saying "they" and "we".  In referring to a hypothetical person, I can switch between "I", "you", and "he/she/one".  If I write a few sentences, then stop to think about what I am going to say next (or if I get distracted by something else entirely), I can easily switch from one pronoun to another and not realize it.  The same mistake easily happens with tense.

Beyond technical errors, there are stylistic issues that can occur.  There is a certain rhythm and flow that goes with writing.  It's the musical aspect which makes it pleasant to the ears and easy to consume.  When your thoughts get separated and disjointed, though, the sound of your writing will be affected similarly.  This is why we need to edit.

Editing is the process by which we stitch together the separate pieces of writing that make an entire thought.  When we edit, we do the technical stuff like making sure that our pronouns and tenses agree with each other, but we also make sure that it all sounds good and feels right.  We make a whole, solid, contiguous piece of writing - not a collection of scraps.  And that's why you need to do it.