Being an author is a bit like entering a beauty pageant - you don't enter the latter if you don't think you're more beautiful than the majority of other women, and you don't do the former unless you think your story is good enough to be on the shelves next to the authors you know and love. Deny it all you want, I peeked into the deepest darkest corners of your soul and you think you've got what it takes. You think you're good. You think your story is good.

Your story sucks.

Writing is fun. It’s diving into your imagination, watching the story play like a movie in your mind’s eye and then watching it transfer to the written, or typed, page. It’s the most fun you’ll have with your pants on. But, like all good things, there’s some necessary evils that come along with it. For myself, and probably a lot of other writers, editing is one of them.

If you don’t currently belong to a critique group, I would strongly suggest joining one or creating one. Even if your group consists of one trusted person and yourself, there is a lot you can gain from having organized feedback...

The following is a checklist of things I examine as I read through a story, either for myself or for my group. I hope they help you as much as they’ve helped me. And good luck as you work through this crazy month of editing...

The sprint of NaNoWriMo is over. You’ve done everything you were supposed to do – written daily, set those word counts, put off school/work/family/showering in order to make your goals.
And didn’t it feel good to see that word counter hit 50k? OH YEAH IT DID! And I’m the first to high-five you as you stumble across the finish line and collapse in a sodden heap, whimpering and glad it’s over.
But here’s the thing: it ain’t over. Here’s the scarier thing: it’s never over.

As you work through your novel, you're probably spending plenty of editorial energy on the big things, stuff like motivation and plot, but making smaller changes can add up to serious improvements. Here are a few things to consider.

Love writing but not editing? Has the enthusiasm for editing your novel begun to wane? Mur Lafferty knows how you feel.

Character development is one of the most important parts to writing a novel. And yes, I know that you’ve already written your novel, so how, you ask, does this fit in with editing? Well, if you don’t know your characters enough, how can you possibly edit and rewrite your novel?

Now, what I'm getting at here is that the person who decides what should be in your novel is you. I am saying this with the confidence of the General in the U.S. Civil War, Union General John Sedgwick, who said 'They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance' moments before being shot dead by a confederate sniper at Spotsylvania, but I'm saying it none the less.

Editing a novel is hard work. Writing the first draft is hard work too. In both instances a writer is trying to combine the array of tools available to them. With the first draft the focus is on getting the story down on paper. There’s always the option of saying, “I’ll fix that, I’ll make it better when I edit.” Looking at that first draft with the task of editing ahead can be very daunting. So what are we doing when we edit?

Yup, I named it after myself. I’ve never been that modest.

My name is Val Griswold-Ford, and I’ve got one fiction book and two non-fiction books under my belt, with another fiction book and another non-fiction book coming out within the next two years. Hopefully within the next year. I also have five years’ worth of editing experience at a large daily newspaper in Connecticut. I know quite a bit about editing.

I am also very, very anal. Very close to obsessive-compulsive. Be warned.