To write is human, to edit is divine. ~ Stephen King.

You need to edit your work. Let me say that again, just in case you missed it the first time:

YOU. NEED. TO. EDIT. YOUR. WORK.

It’s not a difficult concept to grasp – even the above words are simple, but it appears a lot of writers believe this is a stage that can be skipped or is entirely unnecessary (I shit you not). They’re wrong. So very wrong. Like, drowning in oceans of wrongness. I recently saw someone proclaim they didn’t need to edit their story before subbing; they’d written it in one sitting and it was good enough to sub without an edit.

No.

Just no.

And fuck off.

There’s a certain level of arrogance and ignorance tied into believing your work, your stories, don’t need another set of eyes to go over it. Forget the fact that you might have misspellings, verb tense issues, punctuation and dialogue anomalies; that your plot isn’t on point, your character is inconsistent, or, hell, that the story just doesn’t make sense. How do you know the tale you’ve visualised has transferred to the page? Do you just not care? Or, are you so sure of your own “perfection” that no other input is necessary? That’s some high-level cognitive dissonance right there.

There are some stories that do just flow from your fingertips onto the page, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need at least a beta reader, someone to give you feedback, to ask questions of plot or dialogue or story direction. Things that will make your story better. Why would an author not want that? Why would you not want to improve not only your story, but your writing?

I’m a professional editor (yes, got the certificates and the industry experience to prove it), and I’m also a writer. Do I edit my own work? Of course I do. Do I send it to others to beta read? Damn straight. Do I have someone else edit it? Hell yes I do. Why? Because I’m too close to the story to see any issues it may have, because I want to know whether it makes sense, because maybe a question or note will make the story stronger, clearer, more kick-arse. Because I want MY BEST WORK out in the world, not just my: ‘fuck it, this’ll do’ work.

Of late, I’ve seen a surge in this ‘fuck it’ submission process, the belief that you just write and your subs will be accepted. Sure, there are places that will accept that “work”, and if ‘for exposure’ markets or ‘contributor copy only’ markets are your thing then… well, okay. You keep doing you. But why not aim higher? Do better?

It comes down to how you value what you do. How you value your readers. Writing is a craft, it needs to be honed, practised, built upon, and you never stop learning. EVER. If you believe you don’t need to edit, that you don’t need beta readers or those rejections that make you look again at your story and better it, then stagnant you will be, stale your stories will become.

Look, I can’t make you engage beta readers, I can’t make you use an editor or hell, even make you edit your own work, but I can guaran-damn-tee you, you won’t hit any of the success you’re wanting. Having a bibliography of pubbed stories in mags or anthologies no one’s heard of doesn’t up your author profile as much as you’d like to think it does. Give me a story published in Nightmare Magazine, or Grimdark Mag, Apex or Clarkesworld over multiple stories published in markets even Google would have trouble finding.

Writers are readers, we know the markets that accept only the highest possible standards, and those are the markets professional writers want to crack – and by professional, I mean those who take the process of writing and all it entails, seriously. Who know there’s more to writing than just words on a page.

It all really comes down to choice:

Be the writer who wants their work to be the best it can be, who wants constructive criticism for the sake of the story, who wants to be better, do better, and to break into those pro-paying markets who have the high standards for which you strive. To have publishers ask you to sub to them because they’ve seen your work and want it; to have readers search for your work because your tales resonated with them, because they love your storytelling.

Or…

Don’t.