“Cool it.”

This excellent advice came from a writing mentor years back and it’s one of the best tips I’ve ever gotten.

Simply put:  She advised putting my supposedly perfect and nearly brilliant manuscript (which of course it wasn’t) aside to let it cool down.  “Return to it in a day or month, depending on how much time you have so you can view it with fresh eyes.”

To be clear, self-editing is the term used to describe a method to polish and transform the initial drafts of a piece of writing into a manuscript ready to submit to a magazine editor or book publisher.

If you’re equating self-editing with over-cooked broccoli, tax forms or potty training a two-year old or stuck on the corner of Draft and Final Copy, these tricks will make life easier.

*Use the thesaurus function on your software or a book thesaurus for fresher word choices.

*Don’t just depend on your spell check.  See if the free site, paperrater.com might help you.  It finds about 90 percent of my spelling and grammar errors, but sometimes it just does not like how I write.  I can accept that from a machine.

*Read your work out loud. Some writers read into a tape recorder or your phone.  Awkward words probably are so change them. When writing radio scripts for a ghostwriting client’s program, I figured (correctly) if the words I wrote had trouble getting off my tongue, my client would most likely stumble, too. Since she rarely rehearsed the script, I couldn’t let that happen.  Now I do it with all my work.

*Delete unnecessary “qualifiers,” such as:  Very, almost, rather, many. What do these really add?  Nothing.

*Don’t expect you can do all editing on the screen.  I do the first two edits on the screen, then print a copy of the manuscript and work from that. Then I input those changes and do another screen edit. We’re up to four now.  Depending on the genre, this may continue for four to six to eight more drafts.

*As you’re reading your manuscript, don’t agonize to locate the perfect word. Just highlight or circle words you’ll want to change later.  I use an uppercase “W” with a circle around it. Then return once the initial edits are over and replace weird stuff with effective words.

*Keep your main thoughts/focus in mind and evaluate why you’ve included an extraneous topic.  Ask yourself: Why is this info included? Can’t figure it out? Delete the rascal that doesn’t contribute to the thesis.  It’s sometimes painful, but it must be done.

*Be careful not to tell your reader something twice even if you do it in two different ways. Redundancy equals boring.

*Choose gender neutral language.

*Watch your mouth, um, adjectives.  I am a champion for freedom of speech.  However, before you include racy or X-rated material or language in your writing, determine who your reader will be.  Sharing experiences at the Los Angeles shipyards in the sixties with grandchildren, consider cleaning up “colorful” descriptions.  They’ll get the idea.

*Keep in mind your manuscript will never be perfect.  Actually, if you’re after true perfection, you may never finish.  Learn to live with “as good as it gets.” Submit it and get published.

To sum it up, check out what Dr. Seuss, king of clever and brevity, said, “So, the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.”