Watch out for over-editing.
I’ve read a couple of books that I thought were over-edited. One had the feel of something the publisher might have asked for 10,000 words cut out of to suit the usual less than 100,000 words. It had big gaps in the plot & character growth as if chunks of the story had been taken out. Another one had the blandness of something worked over with every rule in the book in mind. There was nothing ‘wrong’ with the writing if you looked at it technically, but it had no pizzazz. I remember feeling that perhaps it lost its individuality in the push for perfection. In our efforts to make our writing the best it can be, we run the risk of losing the rawness or freshness of our original vision. After years of working on something, it’s easy to lose that spark under a pile of prunings. I know,…
On dealing positively with feedback
Here’s the process I used to work positively with and apply my latest feedback.