Self-Editing: You Can Be Your Own Best Critic!

Students will identify and fix the most common weaknesses and errors in writing.
Students will unearth and discuss some less-common weaknesses and errors. 
Students will discover their own favorite errors. 
Students will learn concrete, quick ways to strengthen their own writing. 
Students will understand that audience, objective, genre or type, style, and format matter when editing. 
Students will discover that there are different levels of editing, such as: structural, line, copy, developmental, fact-checking, editorial, indexing, formatting, and proofreading.  
Students will examine where professional editors and writers work, what they do, and what the career outlook may be. 

I love to help others make their writing as great as it can be. I've earned a Master's and a Ph.D. in education, and I’m a published author of two novels and of research. I’ve taught high school English for over twenty years, and I’m a professional editor.  I’ve edited novels, poems, dissertations, articles, speeches…just about everything except love letters. I’ve had lots of opportunities to learn about both editing and self-editing. I especially like teaching others to self-edit because I find joy in watching people learn to treat self-editing like a game they can win! It’s amazing how well people edit their own writing once they learn a few tricks and tips!

Homework between the classes will generally not amount to more than 25 minutes per class. It will consist of collecting and self-editing samples of the student’s own writing and asking another reader to help the student discover favorite errors.

The assessments I offer in this class are designed to empower a student to continue to self-edit. My assessments come in the way of ongoing feedback that is encouraging and growth-oriented. In this class, I cannot dedicate long sections of class time to editing or giving feedback on lengthy student writing, such as a college application essay or scholarship essay, but I can offer that one-on-one editing help and feedback in another course. 

I will share final feedback with each student within 48 hours of our last class. This final feedback will offer the student three things:
1.	Genuine praise on something the student learned and applied well
2.	A double-dog dare that I challenge the student to in future self-editing endeavors
3.	A reason I enjoyed having that student in class

1 hour 50 minutes per week in class, and an estimated 0 - 1 hours per week outside of class.