I have a reputation for being fairly prolific, but I have to tell you here and now that I’m not one of those writers who can bang out a coherent rough draft in a couple of weeks. For me, writing a first draft is torture. I have to drag the words out one at a time, conscious all the while that much of what I’m writing is sheer and utter crap. In fact, the only comfort to me during the first draft phase is the knowledge that this is only a first draft and that the miracle of editing is coming -- and that soon my lame and halting prose will be up and running.

Editing is where the magic happens. Editing is the process that separates the gifted amateur from the skilled professional. Sure, it’s about catching misspellings and grammatical errors, cherry picking words and polishing sentences, but it’s about a lot more too. Editing is where it all comes together. Plot is tightened, character is refined, theme is drawn and distilled.

“And, oh yeah, all those exclamation points and unnecessary dialog tags are removed!” he said.

First step in editing is to leave the manuscript alone. Seriously. Put it aside for a few weeks. There’s no greater favor you can do your work than to begin the editing process with fresh eyes. When you return to the work after leaving it alone for a bit, you’ll be both pleasantly surprised and pained. Some things will be much better than you expected. A lot of it will be worse. That’s okay. Editing is where you -- as the song says -- accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. As you read through the manuscript, feel free to jot down notes and change the obvious stuff that hits you in the face.

Then comes the real work. What I try to do in subsequent reads is track the various arcs. I’ll read for plot and I’ll watch for consistency of characterization -- and I’ll consider where the theme fits in and whether the story actually supports what I’m trying to say.

Any word, line, paragraph -- anything -- that hits me wrong or sticks out, I cut. I have no hesitation chopping or reshaping. That’s the beauty of accepting that a rough draft is merely that. You’re not locked into anything; everything is mutable, changeable, editable. You want to go into the revision process with that flexible mindset. It makes it much easier if you’re prepared to cut and reshape as necessary.

The other thing I do is watch to make sure I’ve made every scene as real and vivid as I can. I keep an eye out for the details -- not quantity, but quality -- I make sure I’ve dropped enough cues into each scene that the reader can see it. I think about weather. I think about smells and scenery. Details count.

I try to sharpen dialog. Good dialog is one of my favorite things. It’s tricky because it has to sound real, but it has to be so much better than real. Real dialog meanders and wanders and doesn’t get to the point and is often trite and frequently dull. Written dialog has a rhythm and a flow. It’s sharp and snappy. It’s to the point and it’s funny or poignant or smart or romantic -- whatever it needs to be.

It doesn’t just happen. It takes craft. And a large part of craft is editing.

On my final read through, I look for clichés and trite metaphors and general verbiage. I search for words like little, big, began, suddenly…and I check against a list of my own frequently overused words: actually, apparently, moment, odd, etc. This stuff bloats your word count and adds nothing to your writing. I search for unnecessary dialog tags.

I should point out here that I don’t subscribe to the Death to Adverbs and Adjectives club. The English language is rich and nuanced and complicated. In my opinion, it should be a delight to read and write. I use adjectives and adverbs sparingly, to spice my prose -- like I use salt and pepper to doctor up my food. A little bit goes a long way, but the complete absence is just…bland.

When I’ve finished my own round of editing, off the manuscript goes to my editor -- who will have her own edits to add. And then there will most likely be line and copyedits to follow that, and no matter how carefully I’ve gone over my own work, these folks will have their own edits to contribute. And ninety-eight percent of the time, I’ll go along with them, often even when I disagree. Why? Because effective editing requires developing a certain mindset. Ultimately, it’s about polishing your work and getting it into the best possible version of itself. That takes hard work -- and part of the hard work is getting your ego under control.

Let’s face it, it takes a fair bit of ego to put your work out there for publication. We write for ourselves, but we publish for others, and by publishing, we are stating publicly that we think someone somewhere will enjoy reading our work -- enjoy dreaming along with us. We need a healthy amount of ego to make that sharing possible. But at the same time, we’re none of us so terrific that we couldn’t improve our writing skills. We should constantly be working to improve our craft, and part of how that happens is opening ourselves up to the evaluations and critiques of knowledgeable and experienced peers. Not that every opinion needs to be taken as gospel, but objective and informed appraisal is always worth considering. It’s difficult to be objective about your own work, but if you can manage that, you’re a long way toward moving from talented wannabe to successful published author.