How Much Do You Do Before You Click “Publish”?

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.

Luanne Castle: Poetry and Other Words (and cats!)

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…

View original post 328 more words

3 responses to “How Much Do You Do Before You Click “Publish”?”

  1. Write more! Thats all I have to say.

    1. I am writing more all the time. Thanks.

  2. […] How Much Do You Do Before You Click “Publish”? (lloydlofthouse.org) […]

Comments are welcome — pro or con. However, comments must focus on the topic of the post, be civil and avoid ad hominem attacks.

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.