​Back in my early twenties, before I began working in publishing, I’d never heard the word ‘overwriting’. Place an overwritten manuscript in front of me and I’d likely have thought about all the classic literature I’d read/studied and decided it was really quite beautifully written.
 
I had a lot to learn.
 
A lot more books to read, and edit. Thousands of hours developing my eye as a book editor. Courses on writing and editing. My own journey as an author.
 
Fast-forward to today, with more than 20 years of experience informing my edits, I so easily recognise overwriting in manuscripts. And I do my best to guide authors away from that overwriting.
 
The first step is to help the author understand what overwriting is.

When I copy-edit books, Capital Letters jump out at me as if they’re bold and underlined. Straightaway, I ask, ​Is the capitalisation essential here? Often in the case of ranks and titles, the answer is, No.

Are you feeling pressure to publish your book? A sense that you’​re not a ‘real’ author unless you publish? 

I recently wrote a post about shipping your book and then leaving it at sea. I reference Steve Jobs, who told his staff at Apple, ‘You must ship.’

Actually, these are the exact words he said, in a 1983 speech to the Apple Macintosh development team: ‘Real artists ship.’

Of course, Steve was trying to inspire his team to share the products they were developing. Was he making a statement about all creatives in all artistic fields? Probably not. But that neat little aphorism has gone on to haunt some writers (and artists and composers etc., I imagine).

If you don’t publish your book, does that mean you’re not a real author?

Actually, no. If you look up the word ‘author’ in most dictionaries, you’ll see that publishing the book isn’t integral to the definition. Here’s the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of ‘author’: ‘The writer of a book or other work.’

And if we look at the etymology of ‘author’, we see that it’s derived from Latin and Old French words meaning ‘creator, one who brings about, one who makes or creates’.

If you write a book, you’re an author. A real artist.

Let’s talk about proofreading. Not whether your book needs it (it does; all books need proofreading), but how many rounds of proofreading it needs.

Rounds? you may be thinking. But surely one is enough, especially if I hire a professional proofreader? 

Yes, one round may be enough, if:

1. The manuscript sent to the proofreader is in really good shape, having been copy-edited carefully, and there aren’t many mistakes to spot; and
2. You’re happy to accept that the odd mistake may slip through the net. 

The last point may rile you up. Surely a proofreader’s job is to weed out ALL the mistakes?

No, actually. As the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading in the UK points out, ‘No matter how well trained, experienced and diligent they are, [proofreaders] are still human.’ A proofreader’s job is to make the book ‘ready for publication – suitable, and of a high enough standard, for the purpose and audience required’.

Writing is hard sometimes. I know this, because I’m a writer too. Some days the words flow; some days I get in my own way.

I wrote the following piece years ago, after working with an author who was having a really hard time. 

You write, though you haven’t the time.
You write, though you haven’t the energy.
You write, though you haven’t the confidence.
You write, though you haven’t a chance (you fear).

You write, though others don’t see your vision.
You write, though you can’t be Hemingway.
You write, though you open yourself to criticism.
You write, though you may not reach The End.

You write, though the words fight back.
You write, though the muse is elusive.
You write, though you itch to censor.
You write, though your last book bombed.

You write, though it exhausts you.
You write, though it haunts you.
You write, though it terrifies you.
You write, though you bleed.

You write
Because it’s all you can do
With a head that thinks prose
And a heart that beats poetry;
You write, because no matter the struggle
You are a writer.

Be kind to yourself, fellow writer, and kind to other writers too. We’re all sitting at typewriters and bleeding.* 

With my best wishes,

* ​‘It is easy to write. Just sit in front of your typewriter and bleed.’ – Ernest Hemingway

​PS: I don’t like the second stanza of this poem. I nearly rewrote it. Then I remembered: once you've shipped your work, leave it at sea. Going back and rewriting something you wrote years ago isn’t a) productive or b) kind.

Steve Jobs famously told Apple employees, ‘You must ship’, meaning that delivery is essential. Creatives can easily get lost in their art and fail to ship it, usually due to an inability to accept the endeavour as complete and ready to share with the world.​

Shipping requires courage and self-discipline, and it requires staying power. That means leaving the book as it is once you’ve published it. Not re-editing it.

Of course, it’s fine to publish a new edition in which you’ve corrected a typo that slipped through the proofreading net. But fiddling and tinkering and reworking... ask yourself: is this really helping me in my writing journey?

Every author is capable of looking at a past work and pulling it to pieces. But in doing so, you’re looking backwards, not forwards; you’re pulling a piece of art out of the time to which it belongs; you’re beating your younger writer self with a large, prickly stick.

Toying with a book for months, years even, isn’t helpful because:

1. When you mess with art too much, you mess it up. Over-editing can destroy what was unique and beautiful in a book.
2. You improve in your art through practice, so if you’re serious about writing, you need to move forward and write the next book, and then the next book, and so on.

Remember all the long years that you yearned to become an author, and you envisioned what that would feel like? I wonder: is the reality everything you’d hoped it would be? Or have you slipped into feeling miserable for any (or many) of the following reasons: 

• You just can’t stop rewriting and editing your book in the pursuit of perfection.
• Sharing your book has proved way too scary; what if reviewers criticise it?
• You’ve tried to find an agent and publisher, and ‘failed’ to do so.
• The world of self-publishing into which you delved turned out to be a complicated minefield with a steep learning curve.
• You published the book traditionally and were disappointed by sales and/or reviews.
• You published the book independently and were disappointed by sales and/or reviews.
• Marketing requires skills, know-how, energy and funds that are sorely lacking.
• You feel huge pressure to put out another book quickly, and another, and another, even though the whole experience of writing and publishing has long since ceased being fun.

I’ve been working one-on-one with authors for more than 18 years, and in that time I’ve known plenty who’ve become disappointed, perhaps even bitter, that the reality of being an author doesn’t meet their expectations. They grit their teeth and plough on, until they reach breaking point. For some, that’s after one book; for others, after five or ten. But it’s a safe bet that for those authors who really aren’t enjoying writing, the end will come, and it won’t be in the form of a three-book deal from Bloomsbury.
 
Robert Frost wrote: ‘No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.’ To that I would add: ‘No enjoyment for the writer, no enjoyment for the reader.’