Groundhog Day and the Art of Editing

It is February, 2nd and everybody seems to be talking about Groundhog Day (the film).  In fact, I pretty much started my day What’s App-ing my sisters (who live in Germany and Italy) that one of the Sky channels is showing it today back-to-back for 24 hours, which I think is hilarious. But while reading the connected article in The Independent online, I was thinking that while this is funny, there was an opportunity missed, because although the sections here occasionally change a tiny bit, they don’t quite change enough. The great thing about the film is that at the end (spoiler alert), Phil gets his day just right!

Really if seen in an academic context, Groundhog Day is an analogy of editing: Just like Phil is trapped in this day, when writing a paper/chapter/book/whatever, a writer can easily get into a routine where you change small things – or big things – see how they pan out, and if they don’t quite work, you go back to the beginning. You reflect on what worked out in your last draft and what didn’t quite work, and you change it. Sometimes you refine details, sometimes you change the big stuff. Sometimes you change it back, sometimes you decide that a totally new direction is needed. And only once everything is in place you can finally move on to the next piece, just like Phil finally moved on to February, 3rd. Unfortunately, though, is that even if it feels like you are stuck in a timeloop while editing your own writing, time goes on around you and you might get to your deadline before you are ready to move on. I can only assume this happens because we don’t actually live in movies…