There are two ways to get better at writing. One is to practice writing, so your first drafts are better. The second is to learn how to edit your first drafts into better second drafts. It is common for some beginning authors to feel like the second draft is different, rather than better. This doesn’t need to be the case, however. You can learn how to become a better self-editor. In fact, that is exactly what we are going to talk about today.
We have a special guest on the show who is going to teach you how to edit and proofread your own manuscript.
She is a general editor for Iron Stream Media, and she’s the director of PENCON, the annual conference for Christian editors and proofreaders.
Denise Loock, welcome to the Christian Publishing Show.
Links:
- LightningEditingServices.com
- PenConEditors.com
- Steve Laube Post on Word Count
- Grammarly
- ProWritingAid
- Perfect It
- Christian Editor Connection
- ChristianEditorNetwork.com
- Types of Editing
- Word Counts Of The Most Popular Books In The World
Craft Book Recommendations:
- Writing Successful Self-Help and How-To Books (Affiliate Link)
- Made to Stick by Dan & Chip Heath (Affiliate Link)
- Proofreading Secrets of Best-Selling Authors by Kathy Ide (Affiliate Link)
- Editing Secrets of Best-Selling Authors (Affiliate Link)
- Writer to Writer: Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing (Affiliate Link)
- Tailor Your Fiction Manuscript in 30 Days (Affiliate Link)
You can listen to this episode How to Edit and Proofread Your Own Manuscript with Denise Loock on Christian Publishing Show.
What Goes on the Copyright Page?
I tend to write stuff really fast,
and editing comes later;
when the yarn is told at last,
I edit by Woodgator,
cutting out invasive trees
that grew in dead-end plot-lines,
for it’s parasites like these
that waste a reader’s precious time.
The ‘Gator spins his steel-toothed drum,
making forest ride from tangle,
setting story’s sharp rhumb
line with consistent crossing-angle,
a path down which tale freely swings…
amd now I must poofreed the thing.