Guest blogger, Carole Gift Page, continues to share her Ten Steps in Writing a Novel.
(Part 9 continued) While you wrote your rough draft in a spontaneous, right-brain mode, you will want to put your inner “critic” in the driver’s seat for your rewrite. That’s the key word. Be willing to rewrite, rewrite, and rewrite some more. Check your spelling, punctuation, grammar, clarity of expression, facts, logic, pacing, style, and tone.
And if possible, when you’ve given it all you’ve got, give your manuscript to someone else to evaluate—another writer, an editor, a critique group—someone whose judgment you trust. Even the most professional writer occasionally has tunnel vision and needs the objectivity of another person. Be responsive to criticism, not defensive. Few published writers have thin skin; years of deflecting rejection slips have given most of us tough hides.