Excerpt from Success, Your Path to a Successful Book
by Maralyn D. Hill and Brenda C. Hill.

One of the best rules of editing we learned from our good friend and teacher at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference, Cork Millner (yes, he writes books on wine):

  • Do not edit while writing. You can go back and fine tune after it is all on the computer.
  • Do not do the final edit yourself. You may make the same mistake you made in the first place.
  • Plus, it is best to have a trained professional and objective eye give a critique.

We’re also going to paraphrase Cork’s editing tip that we mentioned earlier:
Take a pen to almost every… and, but, yet, so, however, and too that do not add meaning to your story. Circle those little words. Now look at your page. It will resemble a bunch of Cheerios. We call them lifesavers. Remove these lifesavers and your shorter story will sing.

Be sure to sign up for a copy of our new posts as soon as they happen. We do not sell your names and you can remove yourself from list whenever you want.

Maralyn D. Hill and Brenda C. Hill
Success, Your path to a Successful Book
Books By Hills
GLOG: Global Log
SLOG:$uccess Log