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Q&A

Doubts about editing?

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I have been working on a novel, and I've gone around four chapters in. I keep re-reading the first chapters, and I am tempted to edit them. Should I wait until I at least have a finished first draft to start editing, or should I edit as I go?

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This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/20019. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

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I suggest you keep going. What you're doing right now isn't editing; it's nervous grooming. You want what you have on the page to be "perfect" so much that it's stopping you from writing anything else.

Write the rest of the book. Put it aside for a few weeks so you can come back to it with fresh eyes. Then do an editing pass.

If you want to re-read what you wrote in your last session just to get your head back into the space of your story, and you fix a few bitty things along the way, that's fine, but don't hack away wholesale if you only have a few chapters done. Move forward.

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