Focused Editing

I have to laugh. My editing is anything but focused. In fact, my mind is thinking of a hundred things at once—who is the audience? what is the author’s voice? what’s the story goal? how many words/characters are needed/necessary? on which publishing platform will this appear? what’s the logic flow? does the average person know what this means? is that comma correct? should I capitalize this string of examples?—far more thoughts than if I’ve chosen the best word or not in a sentence. (And, I sweat that detail, too.) I do find a “zone” when I play with words and my “focus”
is simply one directive, to make the text as clearly understood as possible.

Below is a screenshot of some text I edited this week. I've blurred the image to protect the identity of this text but what you can see are my additions and edits in the name of clarity. My first edit is pink and my second review is green, blue text is a link, and black text is the original content.

While not much of the original content remains (and my green edits are proof that I even correct myself), the original content lays the critical foundation for the article. Just because I may edit heavily is no reflection on the value of the first draft. I love the process of editing that makes the content better and that would not be possible without the initial work.