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The First Major Edit
While most authors find writing a manuscript to be an enjoyable process, they find editing to be a painful necessity. In this article, I will share my thoughts on how to effectively deal with the first major edit of a manuscript. Throughout the process of writing, we are constantly editing our work, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, page by page. I call that the active editing phase. Once we have completed our first draft, we go back through the chapters one by one for fine-tuning and consistency. I call that the initial revisions phase. Next, we send our manuscript off to our editors for their review. Once they have…
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How Do You Edit Your Manuscripts?
We all get excited when we complete our first draft. The occasion warrants excitement and calls for celebration; your story is done. Unfortunately, this is when the real work of editing begins. I call it the real work because, at least in my experience, editing isn’t nearly as fun as writing. In this post, I will walk you through my method of editing the first draft before submitting it to the professionals for their review. Before I start cleaning up my manuscript, I do celebrate the completion of the first draft. Normally, I give myself about a one-week break. Sometimes, I will take my family on vacation or just enjoy…
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Why You Should Rewrite Your Completed Manuscript
There is a reason that they call it the first draft; it means that it is not yet ready for publication! Rewriting it from start to finish makes the second version far better than the first. In this post, I will explain why rewriting your manuscript before submitting it to editors and proofreaders makes good sense. I don’t just come up with these posts on a whim. Every post I write is based on personal experience and most are directed at giving aspiring authors quality advice. At the moment, I am rewriting my manuscript for Genesis and thought it the perfect opportunity to share the reasons with you. One item…
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Editors vs. Proofreaders
Editors correct and adapt text while proofreaders simply check the text before it goes to market. In general, it sounds like they do the same thing, but that’s not actually the case. Correcting and adapting text is a bit more difficult and time-consuming than pointing out misspelled words and errors in punctuation or textual inconsistencies. Once your editors have corrected issues at the core of your writing like language structure and sentence clarity, then you can send your updated manuscript to proofreaders who will fine-tune the smaller details like misspelled words or errors in punctuation that weren’t caught by the editors. Many proofreaders will provide their services in exchange for…
