Monday, January 25, 2010

Self-Editing

Writing is rewriting, rewriting is self-editing. Before we send our work out to agents or to a professional editor to polish up the manuscript for us, self-editing is one step we can't skip. In the past, when I self-edited my first novel The Jade Pendant Tale (still a work-in-progress), I tried to do everything all at once. It was a big mistake. From my own mistake, I learn that I need to tackle one thing at a time. Multi-tasking sounds good in corporate offices and some other places, but definitely not in self-editing. Doesn't it take up a lot of time? Of course. And I believe a professional editor, who is so experienced, will do multi-tasking. Not me. Not right now.

When self-editing, I will look at self-help writing books for punctuations, sentence structure, to name a few. As to revising the story, I simply ask myself questions. Self-help writing books can't help with the story. Otherwise, how can the story be unique?

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