Marg McAlister

It's worth taking a few minutes to think about what self-editing really means. It involves far more than adding a few quick revisions - that's basically retyping plus a bit of tweaking! This might make you feel as though you're doing something, but it's not likely to have any appreciable effect on the finished manuscript. Changing a word here and there will not help you get past the publisher's door.

Here are the different types of revisions you can do:

• Edit for technical problems (e.g. grammar and spelling).

• Edit for style (e.g. repetition, viewpoint slips, wordiness)

• Edit for structure (pacing, scene placement, flashbacks, turning points)

• Edit for meaning (theme, 'lessons learned', character motivation etc)

  You might find that it works best for you to do a run through the manuscript for each of these areas, rather than trying to do the whole lot at once.

An example of what true revision means:

One of the most common responses I make to manuscripts is "Vary your sentence beginnings". This is NOT one of those things that can be fixed by simply changing a word or two at the beginning of a sentence - or even by changing a sentence around. To fix the problem of repetitive sentence beginnings, you really need to re-cast whole paragraphs. (I gave an example of how you can do this in the first article in our 'self-editing' series: "Colour-Code Your Writing".) If you try to get around this problem by simply changing a few words, the results will hardly be worth the effort.

The Need to Build Your Skills

The first thing you need to acknowledge is that you can't learn everything overnight. Building your writing skills takes time - but it's worth every second that you invest. Sure, it's disheartening to look at the work of a published author and realise how far advanced their writing skills are in comparison to yours. You tend to let negative thoughts take over, such as: "I'll never be able to write that well. What's the point in trying?"

What you have to keep in mind is that most popular novelists have had to pay their dues. They were not born with the ability to write a bestseller. Admittedly there are people who have always loved words and who SEEM to write effortlessly. No doubt you can think of any number of writers who don't seem to go through the same agony as you do. The truth is, you have no way of knowing what goes on behind the scenes. It's more than likely that your favourite author has spent hours editing and revising and polishing. It's also likely that they've been driven to tears many times by scenes that don't work out or rejections from 'heartless' publishers.

I can think of two best-selling authors immediately who go through a gruelling process every time they write a book. Both have achieved impressive world-wide sales.

One is Mem Fox, a popular author of children's picture books. If you ever thought that writing picture books was easy, and that 500 or so words could hardly need much editing, think again. Her favourite book is Koala Lou, about a koala who is upset at coming second in a gum-tree-climbing contest. Koala Lou, 585 words long, took Mem Fox two years and 49 drafts to complete. Her best-selling "Possum Magic" (initially called Hush the Invisible Mouse) was rejected by nine publishers over five years before it found a home with Omnibus Books. Even then, the contract was conditional - Mem had to change the mouse to a less common, more Australian animal. She chose a possum because she had possums on the roof. And that, of course, meant more revisions.

The second author is Jennifer Crusie, who writes romantic comedies. At a workshop, Jenny confided to participants that she reads EVERY WORD of her books aloud when she's editing the final draft. That's right - every word. She listens for clunky language and sections that just don't ring true.

For these two authors - and many, many other authors around the world - learning to edit, polish and revise did not come easily. They did what they had to do, so their stories were the best they could manage.

Be prepared to invest time and energy in learning how to self-edit. It WILL pay off. Your aim should not be to get your story out there as quickly as possible, but to send out the BEST story possible.

Good Resources to Help You Learn Self-Editing Skills

The following three books are all worth a place on your shelves. Renni Browne and Dave King's "Self Editing for Fiction Writers" could justifiably be called a classic - it has helped countless writers to learn self-editing skills.

• Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King. (c) 1993, Harper Collins. ISBN 0-06-270061-8

• Revision - A Creative Approach to Writing and Rewriting Fiction by David Michael Kaplan. (c) 1997 Story Press ISBN 1-884910-19-X

• How to Self-Edit by Dianne Bates. (c) 2005 Emerald Publishers. ISBN 81-7966-159-8 Details and ordering information on Di's website www.enterprisingwords.com