As writers, often we are our own worst critics. We’re typically either too ruthless or not critical enough of our own stories and articles! Worse, we sometimes even hate the good parts of our manuscript and love the poorly written sections.

The challenge then is to know when and how to revise our own writing.

Revising involves patching up and reworking our story. It may require writing new sections or even just starting over. It’s sometimes referred to as “rewriting” or “drafting.”

No matter how good we think our story might be, we need to revise, if only to proofread the piece. Rarely do authors write the perfect piece in their first draft. In addition to typos, there may be structural problems with the manuscript, ranging from word choice to organizational issues.

Three general areas you might revise the manuscript for include:
• Language arts class issues (grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization)
• Structural issues (plot, characters, point of view, etc.)
• Style issues (get rid of the fluff, use active voice, tighten dialogue, etc.)
Most of this blog’s entries are about specific structural and style flaws that can hamper your writing. Troll through it for suggestions about how to address such problems when revising.

Since writers are close to their work – a universe for the story that is in the writer’s head always is larger than the universe for the story on paper – they often may not recognize what needs to be revised. To remove yourself from the story to determine what needs to be revised, set it aside for a few days, then reread. You’ll likely notice that what sounded great when you first penned it is now problematic. Another solution is to have it critiqued by others…not by a spouse, parents, family members or close friends but by someone who writes, reads or edits for a living (Full disclosure here: I own and run such a critiquing service.). In addition, have just one or two readers/editors look it over – if you give it to too many people, you’ll likely receive conflicting advice that only will make revising more difficult, if not impossible.

A final note: While analyzing your own draft, deconstructing the piece into the various elements of fiction (plot, setting, character, point of view, theme, style, etc.) can be beneficial. However, revising the manuscript by focusing on one element at a time probably isn’t. These elements work together to make an integrated whole, and so the story needs to be approached holistically.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

“First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him!” – Ray Bradbury

“The story…must be a conflict, and specifically, a conflict between the forces of good and evil within a single person.” – Maxwell Anderson

“If you do not have an alert and curious interest in character and dramatic situation, if you have no visual imagination and are unable to distinguish between honest emotional reactions and sentimental approaches to life, you will never write a competent short story.” – Edward J. O’Brien

“What is either a picture or a novel that is not character?” – Henry James

“To most readers the word ‘fiction’ is an utter fraud. They are entirely convinced that each character has an exact counterpart in real life and that any small discrepancy with that counterpart is a simple error on the author’s part.” – Louis Auchincloss

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past decade, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

The human body really isn’t meant to perform for hours on end some of the tasks that our modern writing and office equipment demand of it.

All too often, our necks cramp from looking at computer screens at slanted angles, our eyes burn from staring too long at the fixed distance of a computer monitor, and our fingers turn numb from the strain of our wrists performing repetitive motions. If you’ve spent all day working in an office under such conditions, the last thing your body wants to do once you’re home at night or for the weekend is to keep it up by writing.

Take some time to explore ergonomics issues and see if you can modify your writing space so you can get back to working on that book.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

How frequently you’ll blog largely depends on your time constraints and your readers’ thirst for information from and about you. More than once a day is too much, but you probably want to have an entry every 2-3 days and certainly no less than once a week if you’re to maintain readership.

Of course, blogging will cut into your writing time, so you want to limit the length of your blogs. That’s a good idea anyway, as most online readers aren’t interested in reading particularly long entries. Between 30 and 1,250 words is good for a good a blog entry. This entry is 212 words long.

To keep blogs from diminishing your book writing time, you may want to try penning blog entries that can be used in future tomes; this is particularly useful if you’re writing nonfiction. Via my blog, I’m actually writing five or six other books as I change up the topic matter each day. Since blogs typically allow you to see how many people are reading each entry you can quickly get a good sense of what topics are of the most interest to readers and so refocus your efforts on the book ideas that will have the most appeal.

Finally, don’t forget that you can earn money by blogging. You can place ads on your blog entries (whoever is your blog host will have tutorials on how), and even select which products you want to sell. Choose products that are related to your entry; for example, when I wrote about treating a fall injury on my hiking blog, my ads focused on first-aid kits and equipment readers might purchase. If you have teens in your household, they might be interested in taking over this aspect of your blog so that way you’re not wasting time marketing when you want to be writing. Once you have a good blog following, and if you do a good job of targeting the ads to your entry, you can earn a few hundred dollars a year from this advertising.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 350 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my self-publishing guidebooks:

Whenever you self publish a book, you’ll have the opportunity to track sales, or see how many books you’ve sold. You may have to go to a couple of different web pages to do this, though, if you sell a book at both KindleDP and Smashwords. Be aware of where these pages are and check them out – but don’t obsess over the numbers.

If you were an internationally-known author whose books regularly made the bestsellers list, you’d have an agent who watched those numbers for you. As an indie author, your numbers may not change significantly (if at all) for a few days at a time.

While knowing the total number of books you’ve sold is interesting, put the information to good use by seeing what promotional efforts result in sales. Sales numbers may not always be easy to correlate to a specific effort, but over time you can make some generalizations.

A personal example: Watching sales of four published works for more than 18 months, I’ve found that when a blogger reviews or features one of my books, its sales go up. They also jump (not surprisingly) between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Book readings move a couple of books as well. Radio interviews on a show targeted at those interested in the arts always leads to book sales, much more so than when newspaper articles appear about the book. However, if the newspaper article mentions one of my book readings that’s coming up, the host book store typically sells a few more of my titles. What conclusions can I draw from this? The more I target my marketing to specific audiences who would be interested in my book rather than a general, albeit large, audience, the better my book sales. Knowing this helps shape my promotional efforts for future books.

There’s one other good reason to track sales: You want to ensure your royalties match what is paid out to you. Though such problems are rare, they do occur.

In any case, refrain from checking out your book sales stats every few hours let alone from day to day, especially if you’ve published only one or two books. Your time will be more effectively spent promoting your books – or penning your next one!

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my self-publishing guidebooks:

Any time we begin something new – speaking in front of people we’ve never met, trying out a new electronic device, driving around a city we’re visiting for the first time – there’s a good chance that we’ll feel a little nervous. Our stomach might tighten, our hands could get clammy, we may even break a sweat. When that physical response occurs, our instincts tell us to avoid the danger.

As a writer, you’ve probably experienced such sensations when pulling the chair up to the keyboard or opening your notebook. Queasiness takes over because you’re uncertain what to write or if what you plan to say will be good enough. There’s a distinct danger of failing.

Indeed, for writers each new book, chapter, paragraph and even sentence is akin to setting down a road unknown. Each time we begin to write mimics turning onto tan unknown road heading into the desert. What if we run out of gas out there? What if we get lost? Who knows what other threats await in that vast emptiness?

There’s no reward without risk, though. After all, who knows what great scenery lays ahead, what discoveries may be made, what Eden awaits at the western end of that highway? We never will know – we never will finish the sentence, paragraph, chapter or book – if we do not drive onward.

Even if upon reaching our destination nothing lays ahead but more desert, the journey itself was worth it. With that trek and each one that follows, the next road becomes easier to navigate. The experience alone enriches us.

Yes, we can decide to never set down that highway and instead pull off onto the shoulder. Our queasiness and self-doubts then may subside. But what have you given up?

Only your dream.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

Most editors who review a manuscript that is in a Microsoft Word file will use the Track Changes function to correct an author’s work. These corrections can range from adjusting margins and indents to inserting commas and deleting extra words. Editors often use Track Changes as proof of their labor and so the author can go through the manuscript and decide herself which changes to make, as she may disagree with the editor’s style or correction. Making such corrections also can be instructive for the author.

As an author, you’ll want to be familiar with using Track Changes so that you can get your manuscript into a publishable form.

First, you need to know how to get into Track Changes mode. In the ribbon at the top of your open Word document, click on “Review”. The ribbon will change to a new set of commands. Look for “Track Changes” in the middle of that ribbon. Clicking the Track Changes icon turns it on and off.

To change the red proofreading marks that appear on the screen, look immediately to the right of the Track Changes icon. The top pull-down alters what appears on the manuscript. By pulling down the menu and clicking onto “No markup”, all proofreading marks will disappear. By clicking onto “All markup,” you’ll see all of the corrections made.

Each time you call up the Word document, all of the red proofreading corrections will show up, even if the last time you read the file it was placed in “No markup”. That’s a limitation of the Microsoft Word program (Note to Microsoft: Please change this!).

Getting rid of the red correction marks for good requires that you “approve” or “reject” the correction. To do that, place your cursor anywhere on the correction. In the ribbon, to the right of the pull-down menus you used earlier, is a blue checkmark over the word “Accept” and then a red X over the word “Reject”. If you want the correction to be made, hit the Accept checkmark; if you don’t want the correction to be made, hit the Reject X.

Also part of Track Changes is the reviewing pane. To turn this on or off, look for the last item listed below the pull-down menus to the right of the Track Changes icon. Clicking on this wording either shows or hides the reviewing pane.

You also can alter what corrections are shown in the reviewing pane. In the second (or middle) pull-down menu to the right of the Track Changes icon, you can checkmark which corrections you wish to see in the reviewing pane. Typically, you just want to have “Comments” checked to see running commentary offered by the editor.

Once you’ve made the correction that the editor recommended in the reviewing pane – or if you decide it’s irrelevant – you can remove the comment. Simply place your cursor on the comment in the reviewing pane. Then in the ribbon at the top of the page, look to the left of the Track Changes icon for a red X with the word “Delete” below it. Simply click the red X, and the comment will vanish from the reviewing pane.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my self-publishing guidebooks:

One of the great challenges of marketing your book is getting is before potential buyers’ eyes. This can be done via the Kindle ebook bestsellers list on Amazon.com at a limited cost to you. Here’s how.

First, the very same day that your ebook is available for sale, peruse the top 20 bestselling ebooks in the category that your title would appear. Identify three or four that are very similar to your title; you may need to go through the top 40 or even top 60 to find those books. Next, purchase a copy of those three or four titles. Then buy a copy of your own book.

When others call up those three or four bestselling books’ pages at Amazon.com, the odds are good that your new title will show up in the section entitled “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought”. Your title also likely will appear below the reviews in a section entitled “What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?”

If you can get a few others (such as family members and close friends) to do this as well, you further increase the odds that your title will appear on these other books’ sales pages. This is especially true in categories where the number of books sold on an hourly basis is low or that have few titles for sale.

While that alone won’t guarantee book sales, it does improve the chances of them. After all, more people – especially those interested in titles just like yours – are apt to see your ebook. Further, people who compare books to make the best lone purchase hopefully will see that your title is less expensive yet just as informative and so select your ebook over the bestseller. Some potential readers may make multiple purchases or sample your book, the latter of which can lead to some sales. These ales in turn can push your title onto the bestseller list, which usually guarantees additional purchases.

Is this rigging the system? No more so than big publishing houses that buy shelf space in chain bookstores at entranceways and on endcaps to get people to see their authors’ books. In any case, the real determinant of how well your book sells will depend on its quality. If a couple of people buy your book (because they saw it on page for a bestselling book) but you fail to deliver content or have dozens of typos, they’ll probably write bad reviews and give it one or two stars – which ultimately hurts your sales.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my book marketing guidebooks: