What separates good work from great work? What makes your writing relevant to a wider audience, propels your readers to turn the page, forces you to find the best narrative and distill your impressions into their best and truest form? Editing! Editing is where we make hard decisions about structure, hone the pacing, cut extraneous detail, and sharpen dialogue. It’s often the point in the writing process when we figure out what we’re really writing about, which means we find more meaning as we cut, query and play with language. Like archeologists, we may discover that the shape a piece wants to be emerges from the rough draft as we dig into it. The principles explored here apply equally well to fiction, reported narrative and memoir, at any length.

Taught by a longtime newspaper writer used to working under tight deadlines, this practical class will help you quickly separate the necessary material from the extraneous, and give you tips for being at peace with making difficult but necessary trims. We will read student-written essays and critique them, learning to make them better, and also look at other pieces of writing, including some in various states of editing. Copeland will also explore some key time-management techniques homed over two decades of magazine and newspaper writing, including how to keep yourself on track with self-imposed deadlines and how to get back into a writing project every morning. Students will be asked to come to class with a first draft of a non-fiction essay (a memoir, reported essay or think piece) of approximately 750 words. Any topic is fine, and feel free to email the writing instructor beforehand if you think you’d benefit from a prompt.

Libby Copeland is an award-winning journalist who covers culture and science and has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic and Smithsonian Magazine. She is the author of The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are, which explores family and identity in the age of recreational DNA testing, and was recently chosen one of the Best Books of 2020 by The Guardian. She worked for ten years as a staff reporter and editor at The Washington Post. She has served as a media fellow, guest lecturer and writing instructor, and has made numerous appearances on television and radio.