Before I click “publish”, I follow a step-by-step process and once that process is completed, I click.
But the process is longer and has more steps for a book-length manuscript that I’m planning to sell to readers compared to the editing process for a post that’s free to read.
For example, Hemingway had a process. He worked on one-page a day. He wrote the rough draft of that one page, and then edited and revised until he was satisfied. Then he never (or seldom looked back). His writing day could be a few hours or many depending on how he felt about that one-page.
The next day, he wrote the next-page following the same process. Of course, he had a great editor called Max Perkins who edited Hemingway’s manuscripts before publication. Therefore, maybe adding that one step—a professional editor you trust—would be a good idea for a book-length manuscript.
The other day I posted to a friend in a private forum that if I had known that my Writer Site post was going to be Freshly Pressed I might have spent a little more time on it. I could have read it with a critical eye–expanded some passages, perhaps cropped others. I could have edited more.
As I pondered this notion, I thought I could have added some research, links, more images or videos, and doodads to jazz it up, too. Or not. Maybe that wouldn’t have been a good idea. The story needed to speak for itself.
My mind went back and forth and all around, wondering if I could have done more. Have you ever felt that way? Like maybe if you could just have a do-over.
But even as I was writing and thinking (thoughts going more RPMs than the written words), I thought how…
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Lloyd Lofthouse 
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