Why I Publish Before I Edit

If you want to be true to your words, you should, too.

The Middle English word publish originates from another English word: public. If you speak French, the word publish has a latin ancestry of publicare — make public — and, ultimately, publicus. With that said, publish simply means to “make generally known”.

Today, we live in the digital world. In this context, publish still simply means to “make (content) available online.”

The directive is right there in the definition; your job as an online publisher, blogger is to make content available online … Worry about everything else afterwards.

Say what you wanted to say

Before I sit down to write, everything I want to discuss fills my mind. I’d bet that’s the same for you. The headline of the piece comes first. The points flow in concurrently. Supporting details come along to help my mind paint the full picture. By the time I pull out my keyboard to start typing, the stage has been set, and all that’s left for me to do is let my thoughts flow onto the page. Stopping and editing here and there would interrupt the flow of the story.

Along the way, I might rarely miss a letter or misplace punctuation. These are pretty minor obstacles in the path of my stream of thoughts; they are easily remedied in the moment. Such issues are akin to pebbles along the shore of the stream. What’s not minor is the desire of perfection; this can have a similar effect as a large log that spans the width of a stream.

A desire of perfection will keep you from making content available online. The more you desire perfection, the more you’ll interrupt your flow. The more you interrupt your flow, the less content you’ll produce. The less content you produce, the further removed you are from sharing your mind’s original thoughts with your readers. Striving for perfection is perfectly fine, but allowing that desire to keep you from publishing goes against your title.

Your job as an online publisher, blogger is to make content available online. In order to grow as a writer and build your readership, you need to respect your title, and make your words generally available to your readers. You can worry about everything else, editing and polishing, afterwards. I do exactly that.

My Process

When I write, I just write. I peck away at the keys on the board of my laptop, and I do my best to only rarely delete. When all the words have flowed from my mind and landed on the page, I push the publish button. I learned the virtue of this the hard way.

The lesson learned

There was a point in the middle of my writing journey that I acquired a desire for my words to be perfect. Not surprisingly, this was around the time when I started to take myself more seriously as a writer. At this point in my journey, I had already published a successful book, been featured in many publications, and shared my opinions publicly. After tasting some degree of success as a writer, I wanted to uphold my good name.

I wanted everything I produced from that point to live up to my prior works and beget more success. I wanted my words to be perfect from there on. Unfortunately, as I soon realized, this desire to be perfect impeded my ability and excitement to make my work publicly available online.

How I make more content publicly available today

Because I was able to see the errors in my new desires for perfection, I was able to leave them behind and correct my path forward as a publisher. I decided that I’d publish what I write and write more. All of this happened subconsciously. It’s only now that I’m realizing that I’ve engaged in this process.

These days, I write only when I want to and I publish what I write. When I start writing an article, I rarely stop before I’m ready to publish. A good deal of my creativity happens at night, so I’ve done much of my best writing in the middle of the night when I should be asleep along with my neighbors.

Just about all of my most successful articles were written and published in a single writing session in the middle of the night. I have been able to do this because I don’t worry about editing while I write. I write what I have to say, publish what I’ve written, and walk away. Often, walking away means finally getting to sleep as my neighbors wake long after dawn.

When I return to my keyboard, I read what I wrote and the fix errors I discover. I add some polish and share my published work on content discovery platforms, such as ManyStories. If I have time and energy immediately after publishing a piece, I may read the article and make quick edits on the fly before stepping away. The online publishing platforms of today make this easy.

Why this works

Unless you have tens of thousands of subscribers, which I’m approaching here on Medium, there’s a good chance no one will see what you’ve published for about half an hour if you don’t manually share it with your network. Even with the best SEO, Google won’t index and surface your published piece for some time.

Medium’s algorithms may alert your followers when you publish a new article, but that still gives you ample time to do a quick read through of your piece to touch up any glaring errors; that should be enough for a first pass. If a few of your followers read your article and come across minor errors you haven’t had the chance to edit, they’ll forgive you. Think of these early readers as your beta users; they are usually your most enthusiastic subscribers and are inclined to forgive your errors. They are generally happier when you publish new, imperfect content than when you withhold valuable content in favor of perfectionism.

After you publish, I suggest taking some time to step away before returning to edit and polish. This will give you some needed rest and enough headspace to undertake the editing process.

Conclusion

Publishers are meant to publish. To publish is to make your content publicly available. That doesn’t mean you can’t edit and apply polish after the fact. What it does mean is that you share more of your thoughts, in true form, with your readers.

I highly recommend that more writers try publishing before editing and polishing their articles. It will help you evolve as a writer and build your portfolio of content much faster than you would otherwise.

I wrote this article in a single sitting before work. I’m walking away now. I’ll be back to edit and polish during my lunch break.