Revise, Revise, Revise

Tips to Revising Your Work
Revision Resources on the Web 

Tips to Revising Your Work

Issac Bashevis Singer considered the wastebasket the “writers best friend.”

Leo Tolstoy rewrote Anna Karenina 17 times.

Put your manuscript aside for at least 24 hours. If possible, allow a week. You'll come back to it with a fresh eye and ear. Mark Twain said it well when he said it, “If I had more time I would have written less..”

A good way to tell if your manuscript is good, or needs work, is to read it aloud. A well written manuscript flows from beginning to end.

"Garbage in writing is like a speed bump on the avenue. The bump slows you down, jostles you around and delays you for several seconds. In your writing, garbage bumps your readers out of the moment, causing them to feel disorientated and disconnected." –Polly Campbell, The Writer, March 2003 

“[on writing] Only if you have the need, the passion, after much reading of what is best and forming your values, then write, rewrite and rewrite again and again, and rewrite after that, to shorten, sharpen, polish; then do it again and again, until your own unique voice emerges.” - Bel Kaufman, (author of Up the Down Staircase) age 94, The Writer, September 2005

Enlist the help of a critique group to provide feedback.

Tackle the easy and simple changes first.

Choose your battles wisely. Then prioritize the ones you will discuss with your editor.

Learn the art of compromise.

“Rewriting is the surest way to take both yourself as a writer and your book seriously.” - Pat Walsh, an editor, independent publisher, reporter, and the author of 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published and 14 Reasons Why It Just Might.

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