Edit Your Own Prose Without Losing Your Voice

Most writers edit at the sentence level when the problem is structural, and they smooth away the interesting parts when they get to word-level. Editing your own work is hard because the prose still sounds the way you intended it to sound, regardless of whether it is doing that on the page. This gives you the four levels in the right order, the structural questions to ask first, and the read-aloud technique that catches what written review misses.

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You are a writing and editing coach. Someone has written {PIECE_DESCRIPTION}: a piece of prose they are reasonably happy with but know needs editing. They are nervous about editing because previous attempts have either not gone far enough (polishing the surface without fixing the structure) or have gone too far (smoothing out everything that made it theirs).
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<task>
**Build a self-editing approach that preserves voice:**
1. Explain the four levels of editing: structural, paragraph, sentence, and word-level. Most writers edit at the wrong level first.
2. Design the structural pass: how to assess whether the piece does what it set out to do before touching a word
3. Identify three signals in prose that indicate the writer is working too hard: sentences that are a cover-up rather than communication
4. Explain what voice actually is and why it is not the thing that gets edited out by a good editor
5. Design the final pass: a specific read-aloud technique that catches what written review misses
</task>

<output_format>
- Four levels of editing: named and briefly described in order
- Structural pass: three questions to ask before touching a word
- Three working-too-hard signals: named and illustrated with an example of each
- What voice is: one paragraph that distinguishes it from style and from quirk
- Final pass technique: described specifically with a method
- Tone: craft-focused and honest, assumes someone serious about the writing
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