I have nearly finished what I hope is the penultimate thorough edit of my novel. I must have done over thirty thorough edits. It has been an exhausting, but enlightening process.
In the beginning, I thought that each subsequent edit would be much easier. I was wrong. But after each subsequent edit my novel was tighter and pacier.
During my edits I discovered weaknesses, repetition, shoes and socks problems, clunky sentences, poor grammar and punctuation, missing signposts, unsuitable chapter titles, chapters that ended without a hook or cliff-hanger, 60,000 words of superfluous text, lengthy descriptions, and dialogue that needed much improvement.
I thought my first draft was brilliant, but Hemingway was right, ‘The first draft of everything is always shit.’
What invaluable lessons have you learned?
Usually with gritted teeth...
I go with George RR Martin - I like it when it's finished. The problem is I hardly ever like it and could always improve every paragraph. The toughest part is actually knowing when to stop.
The only advice I can give is carry on editing until you're pretty happy with what you've got as far as the narrative is concerned. Then go through it again, concentrating on punctuation and typos. Twice, if you can bear it, but not if you're getting fed up with the story at this point because you've read it so many times. I find at this stage I come across word duplications which can be sorted or left as you see fit - a lot of modern fiction I've read seems to find them acceptable, so perhaps it's just me that notices.
At the end of that little lot, there'll still be odd errors if my experience is anything to go by, but hopefully they'll be so minor as to be barely noticeable even by a publisher's editor.
When you finish your second book the editing will be easier because you'll have unknowingly 'edited' the first draft as you've written, and you'll find it easier to spot your own most common mistakes (one of mine is overuse of 'that' in past tense narrative).
I suppose the more you write, the less editing you need to do, in comparative terms.
We live in hope :)
Oops. The question should have read. How do you tackle the editing process?