Guest Contributor: Katherine Rundell

A writer’s work is never done. Unfortunately, a first draft never lasts and upon completion of your book it’s time for the edit. Editing your own book is a challenge but, by giving your work a close reading, you can become a better writer. Here are 8 simple tips to follow to make light work of your editing work.

1) Take A Break

Writing a book is a monumental task and if you launch into your edit when you’ve just placed your last period, you’re not going to have a sharp eye. When it comes to editing your book, if you’re too familiar with the text you’ll miss errors you may have spotted otherwise.

Stephen King recommends resting your draft for six weeks, but if you can’t bury your book at the bottom of a drawer for that long, give it a few days before you come back with fresh eyes.

2) Listen To Your Text

Literally, listen to your book when it comes time to edit it. When you’re hearing your book spoken out loud, choices about sentence structure and brevity will stand out, offering a perspective on what needs cut. Persuading a friend or partner to read it aloud is a great way to collaborate on the edit, or you can utilize software to read to you. Both Windows and Mac users can take advantage of Accessibility software designed to help blind computer users.

3) Search For Slip Ups

“We all have our own personalized linguistic faults and sometimes spell-check doesn’t pick up on these,” says Maggie Howell, an editor at Coursework Writing Service and Paperfellows. “Often homonyms, like which and witch, are easily switched while we’re writing in the flow.”

While writing your book, pay attention to common mistakes you find yourself making – if you mix up there, their and they’re, for example. When it comes time to edit your text, ctrl+f your systematic slip ups.

4) Don’t Repeat Yourself

As writers we all gravitate towards certain words and expressions unconsciously and, once habitualised, we’re exceptionally blind to it. For example, if you’re prone to peppering every sentence with an emphatic exceptionally, this will stand out to your readers in a way that may slip by unnoticed when you reread your work.

Using a writing tool like Scrivener you can obtain statistics of your most-used words. Don’t worry about “the” and “it”, but if there are some stand out expressions you can go through your text and tone it down

5) Automate It

Sure, sometimes you can ignore that squiggly line when you’re adding your own flair – one of the greatest joys in writing is coining a new word or verbing a noun. But utilizing spell-check and other automated tools to edit your text can save you a lot of time.  Tools like BigAssignments, Eliteassignmenthelp, Essayroo and Simplegrad can help with editing, flagging up errors in your spelling and grammar that save you from combing through your text.

6) Pull Back On Punctuation

“Falling back on exclamation marks to emphasis your punchlines or littering your text with semicolons is easily done when you’re in the zone,” says Jody Wood, a writer at LiaHelp and Essay Help, “but punctuation marks can often be jarring to readers.” When it’s time for your edit, tone down your punctuation. Often, you’ll find every exclamation mark can be reduced to a period – let your writing emphasise the meaning of your text.

7) Find A Style Guide

There are many style guides out there, such as AP Stylebook and The Cambridge Guide to English Usage, but in the world of publishing the Chicago Manual of Style is adhered to. This lays out  consistent rules for quotations, citations and formatting. Familiarising yourself with this style guide before undertaking your edit will give you a handy rulebook for standardising the format of your text.

8) Limit Your Edit

If you’re not careful, the edit can be like going down a rabbit hole with branches leading off in every direction. Before you know it, you’re rewriting your entire book from what seems like scratch. Performing a good edit means knowing when to stop – at a certain point, you’re just tinkering. Give yourself a time limit for your edit and stick to it, otherwise it never stops.

Wrapping Up

Editing your own book can be illustrative and informative and turn you into a better writer. By understanding how you’re prone to  misusing punctuation and repeating certain words, your future writing will be even better. Snip snip!

Katherine Rundell is a book writer at Dissertation Help and Essay Writing Services. She writes crime and historical fiction, and has been published in a variety of mediums including digital, print and magazines. Katherine is also a proofreader at Cheap Essay Writing service.