Welcome back to another Open Book Blog Hop!

Today’s topic is: How do you know when you’ve done all the editing you can on your story? Or that you’ve gone too far?

And remember to pay a visit to my fellow writers to see what they have come up with. You can find their works here!

This one is a great topic, especially for my 100th post here on the site! Editing is a tough job. I am my own worst critic, as I am sure is the case for most if not all authors. That said, I’ve had the great fortune to work as a freelance proofreader in the last year or so, and I feel this has certainly taught me a few things and helped me when it comes to critically assessing my own work.

When editing book one I went into editing not entirely knowing what the process entailed. I printed a copy of my first draft and sat down with highlighters at hand. The white pages became awash with a rainbow of neon colours as I targeted perceived errors. I read through my work twice to try to capture any errors. I then uploaded it to Kindle and used text to voice to have it read to me. Yes, the voice was somewhat robotic, but it had enough of a human quality to it to give me the feel of it being read to me. This aided in picking up other errors merely reading would have overlooked. I then made the adjustments and repeated the process.

From this point I sent the book to my test readers, asking for feedback. What works? What doesn’t work? Are there any glaring plot holes? And obviously, to highlight any errors I have missed. This was quite a nerve-wracking part of the process as it was the first time my book was read by somebody other than myself. From this, I gathered their feedback, looking beyond any “personal preference” change recommendations and making any major changes. A final readthrough and text-to-voice process and I then passed it over to my editor.

And that in and of itself was a whole other world I hadn’t known much about. The ultimate answer to this week’s question is simply “once I can no longer see the wood for the trees.” Once I’ve edited, tweaked and tightened it to the point I am most happy, and more importantly, am blind to further issues, that is when it heads to my editor. There, I have full faith that anything I’ve missed will be found and can be resolved, forming the final edit ready for publication.