Are you pleased by what you’ve written?

When I have hand­ed in a new man­u­script it is not uncom­mon for the edi­tor to say to me—“Are you pleased by what you’ve written?”

Often, the answer, you might be sur­prised to learn, is “No.”

Con­sid­er, I have worked on the text for much of a year—if not longer. The truth is that the work seems dull, poor­ly writ­ten, all too famil­iar, full of mis­takes, spelling, grammar—you name it.  It is all those things because I have lived with it day in day out all that time. Famil­iar­i­ty breeds laziness.

But, the very act of giv­ing it to some­one else makes a huge difference.

In this con­text I think of Samuel Johnson’s words, “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fort­night, it con­cen­trates his mind wonderfully.”

Just know­ing my edi­tor is read­ing the text some­how con­cen­trates my mind won­der­ful­ly. Or is it panic?

So I go back to the manuscript—which is annoy­ing to edi­tors because I am chang­ing what they are cur­rent­ly reading—and when I read my text my pri­ma­ry emo­tion is … embar­rass­ment. How could I have missed this? Or that? What does this sen­tence mean? Why did I send this in?

The worst moment comes when—in the course of the re-reading—you dis­cov­er a major plot flaw.

One writer I know—a very good writer—once told me that she sends her man­u­script to a copy­ed­i­tor before she hands her draft in.  A good thing, though per­haps expensive.

Of course, I run my text through my computer’s spellcheck­er. Then I run it through my laptop’s spellcheck­er. I some­times even run it through an exter­nal spellcheck­er. Guess what? 1) Each pro­gram finds things the oth­ers don’t. 2) They don’t always agree. 3) Some­times I don’t agree with any of them.

Then I run it through my word rep­e­ti­tion counter, and dis­cov­er I used the word “ter­ri­ble” thir­ty times. Not good. Not smart. Not good writing.

I tru­ly think the hard­est part of writ­ing is see­ing your own work objectively.

I have no prob­lems with self-pub­lish­ing. I have major prob­lems with self-editing.

There are oth­er things you can do. Read the work aloud to some­one. Put your work aside for a month (or a year) and come back to it fresh.

Or you can send it to your edi­tor. The truth will out.