​You’ve finished your first draft and you’re wondering, Is it any good? 

To evaluate your work and figure out what you want to change, you have to get some emotional and psychological distance on it. You have to read it as if you’ve never read it before. If this sounds impossible, stay with me for some ideas to try. ​

​But first, celebrate your accomplishment! You’ve created something from nothing. You didn’t just talk about writing a book some day, you actually did it. That takes commitment and perseverance. Countless would-be writers have yet to do what you have done.

​You’ve already revised your writing as you went along, so revising is nothing new. But this stage does call for a more analytical or "critical" approach. By "critical," I'm not inviting you to unleash your inner critic, but to think critically. If you dread reading your work with a critical eye and you’re prone to negative self-talk, try to adopt an attitude of positive neutrality. Your goal is to look objectively at your work without running it or yourself down, or less likely, inflating your accomplishments. If your manuscript still needs work, that’s not surprising. It doesn’t mean that you’re a lousy writer. It just means that you can make this manuscript better. In the process, you’ll also get better at your craft. 

​Set your manuscript aside for long enough that you’re not pulled into echo chamber of the writing mind as you read it. 

But if you’re the type of writer who has to perfect a sentence before moving on to the next one, by the time you finish your draft the words will be embedded in your brain, and you'll be very attached to them. Each polished sentence imposes an inexorable order on the next sentence, and the next, and it may be gut-wrenching to change anything. If you realize after the draft is done that there are structural problems, you have to shake yourself loose from the lovely language and try again. And to do that, you’ll need time away.

Try to give yourself a few weeks, or however long it takes for you to come back to your manuscript as a reader, not as the writer.

​Change the look and feel of the manuscript. If you’ve only worked onscreen, print out the pages so that you handle them as a physical object. If you’ve already worked with a printed copy, change the font, margins or spacing so that the pages look different. Use an e-reader so that you can read only.

​Spread your pages on the floor or tape them on a wall, then scan the typography for too much sameness — too many long paragraphs or sentences, too many short paragraphs or sentences, too much white space or not enough. To assess a particular aspect of the story, such as the distribution of scenes, highlight them all in yellow. The pattern of colour can tell you whether there are too few scenes or too many.

Go somewhere other than your usual writing place to read the manuscript. A café, the library, or just a different room in your own home. If you can afford it, you could even go on a mini retreat. Going out refreshes the spirit, so it might well refresh the critical eye, too.

​Read the manuscript out loud to yourself. Do you stumble over the words? Are you tempted to skip bits and revise on the fly? That's a sign that something isn't working. 

Read aloud to a friend or writing buddy. The mere presence of someone else can make you conscious of how the story sounds to a reader.  In addition to your buddy's feedback, you'll sense the weak spots yourself.

​Try recording yourself and listening as if to an audiobook. Or ask a friend to record it for you so that you can hear the story in a different voice. Does your voice still come across the way you intended? Don't lie down and rest in your cozy place. Listen with alertness.

​When to share your draft is a personal choice. Some writers like to keep their work to themselves because talking about it dilutes their energy. Other writers are revitalized by passing their pages to a writing group or trusted friend and getting feedback early on. For feedback from someone who doesn't know you, you could send your draft to a beta reader. 

There's no right or wrong, but I suggest taking your draft as far as you can before contacting an editor. You don't want to pay an editor to tell you what you already know!

​No matter how you approached the first draft, the good news is that writing is a forgiving art. You’re not working with cement or stone, but with words as fluid as water. In writing, unlike in life, you have as many chances as you need. 

Have you tried any of these methods of gaining distance on your manuscript? Do you have other tricks to share? Please leave a comment.

​Memoir is an exploding category. More and more, people want to read real-life stories that bear witness to the poignancy, pain, and unexpected joy of life. Curiously, despite the popularity of the genre, memoir does not have its own category on bookstore shelves. Why not?

The first person “I” is a natural point of view for memoir and personal essays. But writers take a risk in using “I” – the risk of making themselves vulnerable and exposing something about themselves that readers won’t like. As an editor of memoir, there have been times when I thought the first-person narrator was a little self-absorbed, judgmental, or stuck in a refrain of blame. I feel that it’s part of my role to gently ask the author about their intentions in telling the story this way and to talk about possible consequences for their relationships. These conversations led me to ponder the risks and rewards of writing in the first person. What qualities endear me to a first-person narrator?​

Should it be “short, balding man” or “short balding man”? “Bad hair day” or “bad-hair day”? Mary Norris, a copy editor at The New Yorker for over thirty years, relishes these sorts of editorial decisions.
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​What’s not to like about What Editors Do? This collection of essays traces the role of book editors from acquisition to publication and samples niches like editing genre fiction and working with self-publishing authors.