034: When to Stop Editing Your Book
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when to stop editing your book
Hello, hope you're having a fabulous day. I'm very excited to talk about editing in this episode, specifically, when to stop editing your book. And the idea for this episode was inspired by a question that I got on Instagram, basically, basically, all of my podcast episodes, ideas that I get from people are from Instagram. It was an Ask me anything and someone asked me how do you know when it's time to stop editing? And start querying to find an agent? Which I thought was so it's such a good question. And it's so important. So in this episode, it's not necessarily necessarily going to be when to stop editing and start querying. It's just when do you stop editing your book? When do you say, Okay, I've done enough, it's polished, it's revised, I'm done. And that's a skill. That's a skill that you have to have as a writer and an editor for yourself for your own work. Because technically, you could continue making changes to the book pretty much forever. And you have to be able to get to the point where you recognize that it's never going to be perfect. And you have to just let it go.
So here are three questions to ask yourself, and then kind of a bonus question or step at the end. Question number one, I want you to ask yourself, Okay, have I done at least several rounds of editing. Every writer is different in terms of how much editing they have to do. Sometimes this is determined by how much plotting or work you've done beforehand, before you started writing. Sometimes this is dependent on you know, the genre, sometimes it's dependent on things changing as you were writing, like, there's there's all kinds of reasons why this varies, but it does vary. So I can't give you a number and say, like, Oh, you have to do this many rounds of revision. But have you done at least a few? And and of those few rounds of revision? Have you gone in to do big picture structural changes? Meaning, Have you shifted the plot, like, maybe you decided that you need to completely rewrite the ending? Have you added an entirely different character to the story? Have you changed just the overall plot? Because it didn't really make sense? Or a character arc? Because it didn't make sense for that character? And then also, have you gone in to polish and kind of edit chapters and scenes and paragraphs and sentences?
Number two, ask yourself, what kinds of edits Am I making? Like, what kind of editing are you doing? Are you still focused on that big picture stuff, plot, character, just just big picture elements. If you're still focused on those kinds of edits, and you're still making changes to the plot, then it's probably a good thing that you continue to edit to get all those things kind of hammered out. If you are making tiny, probably insignificant changes, then that might be a sign that you're close to that line of when you should just stop editing and leave the manuscript alone. Let me give you a couple of examples here. So let's say you have a scene where a character, you have the character wearing a black T shirt, and then in one of your editing rounds, you're like, Okay, I need to change this, he's actually gonna be wearing a blue shirt. And it's not significant to the plot, it doesn't matter what color shirt the characters wearing, it doesn't have any kind of deeper meaning. It's just a small style choice that you decided to change up for this character. That's the kind of like tiny, insignificant detail that I'm talking about. And in the same scene, let's say the character is talking to another character. And in the original main, like draft, you had him nodding his head as he was talking to the other character. And then you go in to say, oh, no, I don't want him to nod his head. I want him to kind of cock his head to the side. So, if that doesn't change anything, again, if it's not, if it's not significant to the plot, if it doesn't reveal anything about the character, if you're not Switching it up because you have him nod three other times in the same paragraph, it probably doesn't matter. Now, it's not to say don't do it, you can certainly it's your manuscript, you can certainly make those kinds of changes. But it's important to reflect on why you're making those changes. And if those changes are really making the story stronger, or is it just making the story different?
And the third question, this requires some reflection, and it requires you to get really honest with yourself about your motivation, and kind of, yeah, I guess what's driving you to edit? The question is, am I editing out of fear? Now, fear, in this case, meaning fear of what comes next. It like in the original question that the person asked me on Instagram, they were wondering, like, when is it time to stop editing and start querying. And what it came down to is this person was putting off the querying process, because they were afraid they were anxious about it. And so in that case, it felt safer to continue to edit and polish the manuscript. Because it was safe, they didn't have to deal with the possibility of rejection it was, it was like a bit of a protective measure for them to continue to edit. This can also come in when you think about people reading your book, if it's the first book that you're writing, and you've never had to deal with reader reviews, or people actually buying your book like that's it, that can be a big deal that can bring up a lot of self doubt imposter syndrome, and just fear in general.
So are you continuing to edit because you want to just delay that step? And I don't want you to ask yourself that out of out of judgment, that I can't believe I'm dealing with this fear. This is so stupid, I'm so stupid for being afraid of this. I know it's silly. That's that's not the point of asking yourself, if you do realize that there's some fear coming up and maybe that's why you're continuing to edit. Just look at it with a sense of curiosity, without judgment, like, Oh, interesting. I think I'm continuing to tweak this manuscript and polish it because I'm just sort of pushing off the next step, because I'm feeling some anxiety. Interesting. And then you can kind of work through that fear and that anxiety. And listen, it's probably not going to go away completely, there's still going to be some fear and some anxiety about people reading your work about querying, like, of course, there's going to be fear and anxiety. That's just kind of normal. But I think acknowledging it is an important step. Because what can happen sometimes is that people get so fixated on editing, and they get so fixated on aiming for perfection. And intellectually, I mean, most of us know that it's not possible to have a perfect book, like we're writers are aware of that I think 99.9% of writers are not under the assumption that they're the belief that they're writing the next great American novel, but there's still this this pressure or this push to make it as good as it can possibly be. And sometimes that kind of bleeds over into making it perfect.
The kind of the bonus question or bonus point that I mentioned earlier, is not so much related to editing, but it's more related to, is it time for me to move on to the next step? Again, whatever the next step of your book is, and that is, Have I let someone else read it. If beta readers are part of your process, which I hope that they are getting other people to read your work is so so so important. But if you haven't done that yet, then that's the next step. Right, because you want to get feedback, you want to get suggestions, because you might want to make some changes to the manuscript based on the feedback that you're getting from people. So in that case, the editing process isn't done. And if you have let other people read it, if you have gotten feedback, if you have had some people weigh in, give you suggestions, even just at least one other person, and you've made some suggestions, or or at least consider making suggestions based on their feedback, then you can sort of check that one off the list. But whether you're self publishing, if you're querying, like please don't, please let someone else read your work. At least one other person, it's so so important. And even if you don't end up implementing any of the changes that they suggest, I just think it's helpful to kind of get another readers perspective of your work. Now, you do want to make sure that you're asking people who read don't ask your you know, mom who hasn't read a book since high school to read your book and give you feedback for two reasons. Number one, she's not going to know what to really point out in the manuscript if she never reads and second, she's your mom. Like very you know close to it, she might not be able to look at it objectively.
But that's kind of a bonus thing. So again, it's, it's, this is something that you will become more in tune to and more comfortable with, the more that you write. I would everything I've ever written have gotten to a point of just being like, Okay, this is good enough. Technically, I'm sure that there's more I could do to make this novel really, .2% better, but I just feel like it's done. I have to let it go. I'm confident in it. I feel good about it overall. Let me just release it out to the world. Meaning, you know, send it to my agent or whatever I haven't published yet. But yeah, that's, that's something that I've definitely had to learn, or I guess, with short stories I've written and things that I've gotten published. It's submitting it to the literary journal or the website and just being like, Okay, I it's ready to submit I have to let go of perfection. If it gets a rejection, fine. I'm okay with that. So good luck. If you're in this place right now, where you are Kind of toeing that line. And not sure. I hope this was helpful. And I will see you next week.