Revise, Revise, Revise Your Writing

In case you are thinking of self-publishing, or hoping to publish one way or another, please do yourself - and your future readers - a favor and find an editor to correct your slip-ups. 

Every writer has slip-ups. The blogs of prolific writers freshly available online prove that point very well.

A good editor, as is the brilliant one I have found for my novel, might have read your novel before meeting you. In my case, my editor requested permission to allow a second reader to read it. 

At first, you might sit down and get to know each other better. You should feel comfortable enough to discuss every detail about your manuscript: the concepts and ideas, the characters, and the episodes and whether they push the story forward and make it exciting. Your book will get better because of the outside influence, trust me. Most of the corrections are ones you know you should have done, some are minor slip-ups previously overlooked, and other ideas are insights that will make your book sell better, and be more interesting to readers. Sometimes "more is more"....more corrective action makes a much better product.

While I am happy I revised my own manuscript as thoroughly as possible before the offical editing and felt confident of having written a viable story, there is still usually a lot of editing to do before setting your work in front of everyone. There are episodes to polish, characters to round out, even plots to extend. Writing can almost always be improved.  Be humble, dear Writers, and revise, revise, revise.

Here's a humorous cartoon, and what's not to like?