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Bruce Landay's avatar

Lisa,

I just sent back my changes after receiving a developmental edit of my novel, Electromagnetic Assault. It took me three months and many passes through the novel. Some passes were to fix the easy things like punctuation and other passes were to fix the harder story issues. My final pass was an end-to-end read through by the computer voice. My goal was to make it as absolutely clean as possible. In between I created revision documents to keep track of what I needed to fix and what was complete.

My editor raised lots of issues and had many ideas on how to make the story better. She challenged me and in almost all cases I dealt with her suggestions. There were only a few places where I kept what I had because it was the way I wanted to tell the story. In all cases I gave her suggestions a lot of thought. She definitely made it a better book!

I paid for a second pass for line level editing then once I fix that I'll have someone else do the final proofread. I'm working with a hybrid-publisher so of course many of the upfront costs I'm paying for.

You're advice about the writer taking their time to really look at the editorial feedback is crucial. We sometimes need to get over our egos and let the editors' questions and ideas percolate a while. I found she was right the vast majority of time so I went to the effort to make changes. I'm really appreciating how many passses it takes through a book to get it right and into something a reader will really enjoy.

Thanks for your advice and many resources you provide.

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