I have concluded that using a professional editor is a very good idea. That said, I also think it is important to keep your editing goals in mind, and make them explicit. I have determined that my goals are not literary, but commercial. Brilliant phrasing and eloquence and perfection in word selection are great if they happen to happen, but spending endless time aiming for them gets in the way. All I desire is Clear, Correct, Consistent, Concise, and Done. Brain-cycles spent doing more than that, for me, are wasted.

Clear: Is it easy for the reader to understand what I am saying?

Correct: Does it follow proper conventions, and did I say what I meant to say?

Consistent: Does the style and format stay true to itself, so the reader doesn’t get goofed up on things that are not really a  part of the story?

Concise: Aim more for Hemingway than Rand, but don’t be obsessive about it, because–

Done: Without this, the rest is wasted. Don’t play ivory tower, think Larry the Cable Guy, and just git ‘er done.

Your choices might be different, because you might have different goals… just be clear what your goals are.

I’ve come to the conclusion that doing much more editing has a marginal utility approaching zero, and possibly has negative value to me. Yes, spending more time working with my editor might improve the writing slightly, but I think the ROI in terms of sales or time isn’t acceptable. The writing is good enough for most people, and more dollars spent on it won’t measurably increase sales but will cost cash I don’t have and delay the launch, while more  minutes spent on it will only rise my frustration levels and will decrease time spent writing new stuff. So I’m now working to wrap up the details of formatting, cover art, other art, Amazon stuff, and other details I didn’t even know existed before I started this thing. Target is before the end of the month. Fingers crossed, but it looks like the home stretch is here.

Looks like I’m close enough to done that I need a couple of proofreaders, ones that will read, notice things wrong, and let me know about them so I can fix them. Not sure how many I’ll need. I can email the story in parts, a proofreader can make comments and highlight stuff using the “review” feature in MS Word, and when I get a commented section back I’ll send out the next hunk. There shouldn’t be a lot of errors, but I’d like the final copy as clean as possible. My editor would be doing it, but she had to go deal with a family situation and will be away for a little while.

Post a reply if you have the time and are interested.