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.

I've probably said this in every social network I am in—'I love editing' or maybe if I am feeling viscous ‘I love slaying words’. However a few years ago before I learned to locate the Zen of editing I was both horrified and disgusted by it. The mere idea of sitting down to take a red pen, virtual or otherwise to my writing set me in a cold sweat. I would find ten thousand other things to do around the house rather than do that.

I have a habit of collecting quotes by writers, and sometimes they come in handy. Who better to hear from about editing, than famous writers themselves? After all, they are the ones who have made it, who have novels out there in the world, who have passed through the gauntlet of editing multiple times and lived to tell about it.

When I teach my Revision classes, I spend a lot of time talking about story structure and escalation of conflict and a character's ultimate fight for what matters most to him or her. These are all important things, but hands down, the most frequent problem I see with my students has nothing to do with the story at all. It has to do with the panic.

Our brains are truly wondrous organs. Skip a word in a sentence, and your brain will cheerfully fill it in for you, no matter how many times you read the sentence with the missing word. What? You don’t want your brain to fill in those dropped words? For shame—you’re such an ingrate. Your poor brain was just trying to help.

I love to revise. Really. It's a lot easier than writing first draft. Everything's all right there. It's just a matter of fixing it so it works better than it did before.

You're in the deep, murky middle of your revision. You've used up all of your notes about how to write a scintillating beginning, how to introduce your character, share back story, and show your protagonist grappling with those initial story problems.

You’ve done it. You’ve become one of the few, the proud, and the brave who persevere and can proudly say “The End.”
Congratulations. Have a beer. Some chocolate. Get a good night’s sleep because your next adventure begins tomorrow.

There's a secret about editing that people who have never tried it don't know: editing is HARD WORK. I know, pretty shocking, right? When you sit there at the beginning of your newly completed novel, sometimes it's easy to be enthusiastic about the project. You're going to dive in, red pen and delete key blazing, and Fix That Novel. It's also easy to sit and stare at your novel in bleak depression, thinking, "What, me? Fix this?"

Attitude: Before you begin an editing session, adjust your attitude. Don’t go into editing thinking, “This book sucks, therefore I suck, and nothing I do will ever, ever change that.” Think more like someone who has just finished building a ho...