How much editing should an author do on a manuscript? I tend to write a first draft quickly but then go through numerous editing passes. This includes checking the consistency of the content, grammar and punctuation, consistency of the character descriptions. In spite of all the passes, once I let someone else read it, they always find things I missed. This raises the question of what is enough editing?
I’m reminded of a similar question when I was
in the computer industry. We often said that some engineers would never be
ready for a product to be released because they could always find ways to
improve what they were designing. Similarly, I can always find more areas for
improvement when I do an additional editing pass, but I could do this forever and
never get it published. If I discover a major flaw or error I need to fix it.
Put there comes a time when the minor tuning needs to give way to getting it
into the publisher’s hands. That will lead to additional changes because my
editor will find things I missed.
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