Novel Edits

Writers need editors. Most of us do not excel at editing our own work. The rest of us outright stink at it. Our biases are too great and the surgical skills of editing are beyond our capabilities. Thus, producing great writing necessitates a partnership.

The goal of the creative partnership between writer and editor is an extraordinary reader experience. Share on X Both must be seeking to achieve this goal and both must set aside personal creative desires in support of it.

I am in the throes of reviewing and making (or, very rarely, not making) suggested edits to the manuscript that will be my second novel. These suggestions—over 100 of them—span the gamut from removing commas or paragraph breaks, to repairing incongruent paragraphs, to adding an author’s note at the top of the novel.

I am grateful for every one of them. I am convinced that my editor and I are committed to this same goal—the reader experience. And this novel will be markedly better because of it.