Kate asked Holly Black:

Dear Holly. As a newbie writer (I've just finished my first draft of my first novel), how many revisions/redrafts did you do of your books before sending them to a publisher/editor? I'm thinking of self-publishing to start, but there's still ideas coming at me left, right and centre and is it still ok to change things say 3, 4, or 5 revisions down the line?

Holly Black My answer is going to be a little bit less useful to you because, since I'm not my own publisher, I have deadlines that I can't extend.

I do a lot of revisions, both as a means of getting closer to the story I want to tell and also as a method of procrastination. I go over earlier chapters many times and later chapters many fewer times. But, basically, a book has as many revisions as it needs. Sometimes I have known what a story was and the revisions were about language and characterization. Sometimes I was changing my mind about who the villain might be four different times, resulting in four different drafts (I'm looking at you, Darkest Part of the Forest). Only you know when your book is fully cooked and you've got to revise it until it is.

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