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Hey Reader,

Every time I sit down to write, I know what I want to say, but I’m not entirely sure how I want to say it.

It usually comes together as I write. As my keys go tap tap tap, my ideas turn from amorphous thought-icles (not a word) into digestible profundities.

It's magical.

If you're anything like me, when you're done, you feel so relieved. The last thing on your mind is reading it again and making changes.

Here’s the problem with stopping here: feeling done is an emotional response, not a logical one.

Why?

Because writing is a blend of intuition and logic. If you rely on intuition alone, you’re skipping a logical sense check, which is bad because the best writing is strategic:

• It’s targeted to a specific audience
• It talks about one idea and doesn’t waffle endlessly
• It’s specific and avoids generalizations
• It’s free of redundancy, filler, and wordiness
• It’s cohesive, logical, and easy to digest
• It includes takeaways and next steps
• It meets intent and awareness levels

Editing is the process of checking if your writing meets these best practices.

It’s a sense check. A take two. A “What’s missing?” and a “What can I do better?”

It’s creative and analytical, which is why I view it as a recreating exercise.

I get it. It’s damn hard to return to a piece of work when you’re so relieved to be done. But trust and believe you are doing yourself and your audience a disservice if you skip the edit.

What is the point of putting in all that effort writing a piece of content if it could’ve been better and made a bigger impact?

Here's the problem, though:

Editing is a skill anyone can learn, but only if they have a good teacher. Unfortunately, most people don’t have access to great editors. And the freely available resources royally suck (not this newsletter, of course 😉).

Page 1 of Google tells you to "Read the writing as a general reader from start to end to avoid making errors."

I mean, it's not wrong, but holy moly, it's overly simplistic.

The reality is that free editing advice is terrible, and good editors are super expensive if you're even lucky enough to find one.

After years of paying attention to feedback, I built myself a step-by-step editing process, and my content transformed. It took my writing from good to great and completely killed the endless cycle of second-guessing my decisions.

And here's something I didn't expect:

My writing started taking less time even though my content quality had gone up because of this "extra" step.

I quickly realized the impact this could have on other writers.

So, I became obsessed with teaching writers, content creators, founders, or anyone writing online how to self-edit their content without feeling overwhelmed.

But until this week, you had to work with me 1:1 to see my process and learn it yourself.

I've finally packaged all my knowledge into a self-paced course, and I'm so freaking excited to help writers at scale (in a way I've never been able to before).

There are less than 2 days left on the pre-sale, which gets you $50 off and an exclusive invite to a live editing workshop with me and Rob Lennon in January.

​Pre-order Content Editing 101 right now and save $50.

Cheers,

Erica

P.S. Happy holidays!

There's more if you want it:

1. ​Buy Hooked on Writing Hooks. My first collaboration with Rob Lennon is available again. Learn to write scroll-stopping hooks and finally get your content seen.
2. ​Join Power Your Platform. Learn to embrace your unique point of view and build real authority on social in my free newsletter with Kasey Jones.

Reply to this email and let me know what you think of today's issue or if you have any questions :)

Erica Schneider

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