Six Quick Edit Tips To Publish Faster

When you look at the total number of articles you’ve written, the prospect of seeing a high number, well into the three or even four digits, sends a little tingle down your spine.

That tingle is the effect of repetitive chump change building up to hundreds of dollars. Embrace that tingle as you’re editing. The faster you can edit, the more you can produce.

Don’t use pictures that suck

Maybe it describes your words well, but that photo you love may also be a massive…

CLICHÉ

Yes, cliché photos on Medium are ridiculously easy to come by. Expressing pain?

Don’t use the photo of the girl crying by the window with the rain pouring in the background.

Don’t be that person.

Sometimes it’s wise to branch out beyond the walls of Unsplash, as useful and convenient as it is, and find things that aren’t as saturated.

There are other sites that are full of free stock photos.

Have three or four of those sites bookmarked and use them often.

• Pexels
• Freerange
• Flickr
• Stocksnap

Just to name a few…

Pre-write your headlines

Having an entire library full of good, solid, reliable headlines will save you literal hours of work in the future.

You won’t have to sit around trying to reword your titles or figure out how to best describe the subject you’re writing on. It’ll be done already.

And it doesn’t take that long.

A 30-minute brainstorming session before writing each day is plenty.

Use Grammarly as a Chrome extension

I use it, and a lot of others do too, but for some reason, a lot of people have yet to hop on the train.

I’ve heard people mention their frustration with writing an article in a different browser, and then having to copy and paste it into Medium, but I think they’re missing the entire concept.

It’s a fucking Chrome extension.

You can use it within Medium, on Medium’s writing editor, and it’ll edit as you go. And it’s free. You don’t need the upgraded version.

I use it mainly as a spell-checker because I type so fast, sometimes my keyboard lags.

Every so often it incorrectly attempts to ‘fix’ something that shouldn’t be fixed, but for the most part, it’s pretty spot on.

Don’t type everything out on Grammarly’s editor… just use the extension.

Don’t go running to an AI writing tool

Yes, I know, robots are all the rage these days. I spent an entire article’s worth of time ranting about my dislike of AI writing tools because it bothers me that much.

But really… you don’t sound as ‘human’ as you would if you wrote your articles yourself. A lot of people use Jarvis, and they’ll have the tool rewrite sections of their article to make it ‘sound better’, but does it really?

I’m a student, and for papers a lot of other students use AI, but their grades aren’t any higher than the people who don’t.

Edit your own stuff. Don’t put it through some wonky processor.

It reminds me of that scene in The Santa Clause 2 where the elves stick Tim Allen in that machine, and a super creepy, dumbed-down, shit-show copy comes out.

It’s important to sound like you.

Use similar formatting in all of your articles

Outlines are crucial to writing articles that flow well.

Luckily for you and your editing process, outlines can be saved and repeated time and time again.

Instagram influencers tend to use the same filters and templates for their photos, and similar to that, successful writers on Medium stick to repetitive outlines.

It’s almost like a signature on their own work.

‘I did this’.

I try to make my articles look relative to each other. They all share the same style and formatting.

I rarely use numbers or bullet points. I do occasionally, but they’re not in every single article.

I like to keep my lines semi-short because reading bulky paragraphs (especially for readers on a cellphone) is taxing on the eyes and I click out of articles that are all clumped together.

I like inserting photos right under each subtitle to summarize what the section will be about, and I like to keep my sections neatly separated.

Use an online Thesaurus and keep it bookmarked

I reference an online Thesaurus every time I write an article I use it to avoid writing with stagnant words, or words that might dull down my writing.

Finding a shiny, expressive, and more eloquent way of saying the same thing you’ve already written is a great way of quickly spicing up your story.

Finding new words and exploring the English language is something I enjoy, and it’s truly beneficial in making my ramblings slightly more interesting.

Don’t overthink the editing process. It doesn’t take more than a few small tweaks to make all the difference.

If you'd like, you can buy me a cup of coffee :)