In order to really revise, you must immerse yourself deeply in the work, allow it to affect you as you hope it will affect your reader, release your preconceptions, and prepare to make significant changes.

Real revision is not tinkering. It’s as intuitive, exploratory, and risky as first draft writing.
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Revision is also analytical. In revision you can immerse yourself in the feeling of the story, then zoom out to examine the big picture—the story’s narrative arc, momentum, and meaning.

Toggling between these two states will allow you to make revision decisions that are both intuitive and logical, to create a work that will engage your reader emotionally and intellectually.
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Next time: How to talk to an editor

Reading as a writer is as different from reading for pleasure as it is from reading for scholarly or practical reasons.

Reading for craft, as writers do, is has more in common with the way curious children play than it does with other ways of reading. Reading for craft is like disassembling a small motor to see how it runs—there’s no better way to understand the workings of literary machinery.

Of course you can still read for the joy of it. But if you love a sentence or a scene on your first reading, why not reread it carefully to see how its author achieved the effect they created?

You can learn a lot by simply observing the language of a piece, its phrasing and sentence structure, the way the sentences are combined into paragraphs, and the way they sound and feel when you read them aloud.

You can learn by writing, too. Copying a sentence or paragraph out by hand will amplify what you understand about its method and effects.

As you read, make a record of what you discover. Devote a notebook to passages you admire and writing discoveries you make. One day it may be your most valuable writing tool.

Next time: How to revise

To self-edit you need two things: a grasp of the rules of grammar and usage and an appreciation for the music of a sentence.

Rules can be learned from a book or acquired during a manuscript edit. We often include some notes on how to self-edit in our editorial package.

If you would like a general guide to grammar and usage, check your local library first. Style guides vary by voice, tone, and intended readership. It’s worth trying a few before making a commitment.

A sense of rhythm or cadence can be acquired by reading good writing. If you already have this facility, you know that you can rely on it to make many intuitive editing and revision decisions. To strengthen it like a muscle, simply read.

Of course, it matters what—and how—you read.
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Next time: How to read