A rough draft can take weeks or many months to edit. If you are a professional writer, you tend to review each page numerous times. The work often needs to sit for several days between rounds of editing. Letting the pages cool allows you to see things you cannot see on the first round. The process is a little like ironing out stubborn wrinkles on a garment. You have to press over the creases again and again before the cloth smooths out. With each pass fewer and fewer wrinkles remain. The smallest changes often make the story come alive.

Bestselling authors tell me that they review their work fifty times before considering they are done with the edits. I am always suspicious of the quality of a manuscript that an author claims to have written in a few days or weeks. I suppose it can be done, but exceptional writing usually comes from exceptionally hard work.

Keep writing and editing.

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