Editing: Tips for taking apart your book to put it together again, better

To a layman, editing usually means reading something over and catching a few typos. But for more serious writers, be they fiction, educational, technical or non-fiction, know that sometimes editing means taking the whole thing apart, moving things around, hacking parts out entirely and totally rebuilding whole parts.

You can find yourself looking at a part that just doesn't work and, like a mad scientist, cracking your knuckles and claiming, "We can rebuild it!" as lightning...