The Author Toolbox: Editing Your Manuscript To Perfection

Those first words we write can be pretty awful no matter how much we’ve learned about the writing craft. But that’s okay because while we can fix bad, we can’t fix blank. So get those words out there, then start shaping them into something good…then great. It’s time to edit your manuscript to perfection.

Tool #1: Get a big picture view. I think of this as climbing into a helicopter and getting enough distance from my book to see the complete story objectively. Practically speaking, I wait a f...