Just finished another draft of a book proposal. 5 thoughts, none of them really new:

1) Time is really the magic ingredient for self-editing. Put it in the drawer and walk out the door. Come back later and look with fresh eyes.

2) Print out each draft and edit it by hand.

3) Wait until a new draft to make any structural changes, otherwise you’ll just spend all your time shuffling things around and not writing. (I learned this from The Clockwork Muse.)

4) When I need to make big changes to a draft (less than 10,000 words, anyways), it’s better if I just start with a blank document and just retype everything from the paper copy of the last draft. Cut & paste makes me lazy, and I don’t think about whether things are flowing or not.

5) I knew the score at the age of twelve: “Writing is easy, but it takes a lot of time.” So much time.

Above: a page from Show Your Work!