Editing, Editing, Editing

Image by Wokingham Libraries from Pixabay

Someone told me recently they could never be a writer because they hate rereading their work. Yes. In writing you have to reread, reread and reread again to the point where you can’t see the words on the page anymore, just the words you expect to see.

Is that when you’re done editing? Nope. That’s when you have to set it aside for a month or more until reading the story is like hearing a song from your childhood—something familiar but you can’t quite remember how it goes.

After that reread/ round of edits, then you send it to beta readers to garner constructive criticism. That feedback embarks you on yet another wave of rereading and editing.

Once you finally have your story as perfect as you can make it, then you send it out into the world.

If you find placement with an agent or publisher you might go through a few rounds of development edits where they work with you to develop the story itself followed by copy edits. Or you may just face a couple rounds of copy edits where grammar and sentence structure is the focus. After that, it’s rereading proofs to make sure nothing wonky happened during formatting your story into a book.

Self-publishing will not get you out of rereading either, since at the very least you will need to do the formatting and proofing.

No matter what route you go, shaping a novel for publication is tough road for anyone who doesn’t want to reread their work.