What invaluable lessons have you learned?

I have nearly finished what I hope is the penultimate thorough edit of my novel. I must have done over twenty edits. Editing 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, 48,000 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.’

I continued to read the best award winning authors of adult and children’s literature as I wrote my first draft. I believe it was beneficial to my prose. I noticed a significant improvement in my writing, the further I progressed through my manuscript.

I have learnt much in the process of writing my first novel. I believed I had a firm grasp of the aspects of the novel, but knowing how to best orchestrate them was another matter. I hope that I have got it right. I have more work to do, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The most important lesson I learned is to thoroughly plan from the outset. If I had planned better, I would have saved myself considerable effort and time. But I am confident that the second novel in what I hope will be a series, will take less than half the time of the first.