How Your Personality Type Affects the Way You Edit and Improve Your Manuscript

From Edie: Discover how your personality type—introvert, extrovert, or in between—shapes the way you revise. Learn strategies to edit and improve your manuscript with less stress.

How Your Personality Type Affects the Way You Edit and Improve Your Manuscript

by DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills

Understanding how we process information is critical to focusing on how we can best revise (edit and improve) our manuscripts. 

Our personalities process information based on nature, nurture, life experiences, education, health, birth order, culture, and a host of other factors. These define us as either introverts, extroverts, or somewhere in between according to how our brains are wired. Consider each one of us is different, which means revising our manuscripts can be difficult until we grasp the best way we manage tasks effectively, efficiently, and eliminate undo stress.

We begin with Personality Testing.

Personality testing is available online: Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, Four Temperaments, and others. All vary in their questionnaires, but all measure extroversion and introversion. Like our personalities, we fall within a wide range of uniqueness. 

Extroverts thrive on interacting with the outside world. They love people and prefer a revision party with as many friends as possible. Social interaction is a vital part of their personality. The more people they talk to, the more they are energized. An extrovert steps into a crowd of people and is exhilarated, fulfilled. Often extroverts will take risks and appear to have a wild nature. They seek adventure and are optimistic. Without people in their lives, they can become depressed. Specialists say extroverts learn best by experience. 

Introverts are slower in their process and dive deeper into the why and how of revision. They tend to be quiet, inward, even withdrawn. This personality type doesn’t need to be around others to feel satisfied. They enjoy solitude and work best in quiet settings where they can plan, research, organize, and evaluate. Being around lots of people is exhausting. Introverts have only a few close friends and can be viewed as hard to get to know. In a large room or social gathering, these people prefer sitting in a corner and watching others. It’s more important for an introvert to understand themselves and why they behave or think than to acquire and practice social skills. Specialists say introverts learn best by observation.

When we understand how our brains process information, we can proceed with what makes sense. 

7 Tips to Help Extroverts Revise their Writing

• 1. Choose to embrace who you are and your need for other people.

• 2. Profit from feedback provided by other readers and writing groups.

• 3. Organize the work that needs to be done and call on friends to help at an interesting location.

• 4. Look forward to growing in the craft and relationships formed with other readers and writers.

• 5. Set goals and enlist others to help you stay on track.

• 6. Seek permission to record or ask someone to journal comments and suggestions.

• 7. Don’t be afraid to delete.

Always have a plan to celebrate!

7 Tips to Help Introverts Revise their Writing

• 1. Reread all research notes applicable to the manuscript.

• 2. Journal not only your progress, but also your thoughts and emotions during revision.

• 3. Stretch yourself and ask for feedback from readers, writers, and your editor.

• 4. Avoid negative self-talk. 

• 5. Look at your calendar and set your deadline due date at least three weeks before the project is due.

• 6. Revise at the time of day best suited for you.

• 7. Text-to-voice software is an aid to hearing and reading our work.

Always have a plan to celebrate!

Remember we are talking about a huge spectrum of individual preferences and methods of working. I’m an introvert who doesn’t use an outline and has a bit of a wild streak when it comes to experiencing and observing my novel’s setting. 

Have you discovered your best method to revise? I encourage you to share your findings in the comments below.

TWEETABLE

How Your Personality Type Affects the Way You Edit and Improve Your Manuscript from @DiAnnMills on @EdieMelson (Click to Tweet)

DiAnn Mills is a bestselling author who believes her readers should expect an adventure. She creates action-packed, suspense-filled novels to thrill readers. Her titles have appeared on the CBA and ECPA bestseller lists; won two Christy Awards; and been finalists for the RITA, Daphne Du Maurier, Inspirational Readers’ Choice, and Carol award contests. 

She is the former director of the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference, Mountainside Marketing Retreat, and Mountainside Novelist Retreat with social media specialist Edie Melson. Connect here: DIANNMILLS.COM