Killing Time While Getting Feedback: Story Savvy Self-Editing Episode 50

Since this episode, like the last, goes over booking professional editors and outside readers, I want to be sure to reiterate an important piece of advice on that: I suggest not using the same outside reader for more than one layer of outside critique. So, don’t use the same person for developmental and line edits, or beta reading and copy edits. You want to get the highest number of FRESH eyes as you can on your book through the pre-publishing process. 

The DIY blurb-writing I recommend is Bryan Cohen's book How to Write a Sizzling Synposis:

I also think the occasional free webinars he offers on the topic are great, but DON'T recommend paying for burbs written by his company, Best Page Forward, as I found the process both frustrating and disappointing, and the blurbs I wrote myself have performed better post-publication and polled better with my readers.

And lastly mentioned in this episode, I believe that if you want to work on plotting out your series or just your next book while waiting through the editing process right now, these episodes are the ones I feel are most helpful with planning/potting:

Episode 3: Using Genre

Episode 4: The Core of the Story

Episode 5: Non-Negotiables

Episode 6: One Story or More?

Episode 7: Beginning, Middle, & End

Episode 8: The Protagonist's Pivotal Choice

Episode 9: Delivering a Great Climax & Payoff

Episode 10: Character Arcs & Protagonist Transformations

Episode 11: Creating & Checking Effective Antagonists

Happy editing!

Episode 50 Overview:

Killing Time While Getting Feedback

"Should I keep tinkering with my manuscript while beta readers or an editor is going through it? If not, what else should I do while I wait?"

Join developmental editor Rebecca Hartwell and aspiring middle grade fantasy author Agnes Wolfe as they discuss what to do–and what to avoid–between finishing revisions and sending to editors or beta readers. From booking professionals early to prepping your pages and platform, this episode equips you with the confidence to move forward in your publishing journey.

In this Episode: 

• Why you should consider being hands-off while you wait for feedback
• How to take a break and yet protect your momentum
• What to consider next – copy edit, professional cover, timelines and bookings
• Cautions of tweaking during the wait
• Practical advice if you can’t help but edit 

Resources:

• Hart Bound Developmental Editing - https://hartboundediting.com/
• Agnes Wolfe - agneswolfeauthor.com
• Rebecca’s Favorite DIY Blurb Resource: https://a.co/d/aTESb6o 
• Dragonheart Academy - Dragonheartacademy.com
  

See you next week for episode 51: Consuming & Processing Feedback!

Episode 50 Transcript:

Killing Time While Getting Feedback

Rebecca Hartwell: Hello and welcome to the Hart Bound Editing Podcast. This is episode 50 of the weekly Story Savvy series, where we tackle the 52 biggest self-editing topics and tips to help you make your good story great as an aspiring author, asks me, a developmental editor, all of the questions that you have wanted to. We have covered so much in this series so far, including last week's episode on formatting and finding feedback readers. Today, we're going to talk about what to do while you are waiting to hear back from them. By the end of this episode, you will hopefully understand why you probably shouldn't keep self-editing during this stage, and know what you can do instead to keep your productive momentum going. Joining me to ask all of the questions is my friend and co-host, Agnes Wolf. Hello.

Agnes Wolfe: Hi, I'm an aspiring fantasy author who hopes to release her first middle grade fantasy later next year, and also host and founder of Authors Alcove. I’m here today to tackle how authors can best use their time while their manuscript is off being reviewed by an editor or beta readers. So, let's start with the biggest question. Why shouldn't we just keep self-editing while we are waiting to hear back from a feedback reader?

Rebecca: First of all, I absolutely understand anyone who's ever been in that situation and felt the need to just keep tinkering, because of course you're going to keep finding typos. Of course you're going to remember that you forgot to replace that one line, things like that. The reason that I generally recommend not continuing to tinker while it's off in feedback boils down to a few different points.

First, you want to avoid wasting your time. When you get feedback back from these outside readers, you're probably going to have a lot of overhauling to do. You might end up rearranging scenes, scrapping them, scrapping pages, scrapping plot lines, anything like that. And if you wasted dozens of hours in between fixing the typos and getting the line-level flow just right on a scene that you end up scrapping, that’s wasted time and wasted energy and effort, and aside from just having better things to spend your time on, knowing that you've wasted this time looking back on it can be really discouraging, so it's best to avoid that.

You also want to avoid running into the issue where your understanding of the current state of the book doesn’t match the version that you're getting feedback on. If, let's say, you get an overall note from a beta reader that says something like, I don't feel like your antagonist reads realistically, they feel kind of cartoonish. If you spent the time that the book was off being reviewed working on fixing your antagonist, then it's going to be a lot harder to match the critique that you get on the topic against the reality. And therefore, you may miss out on some opportunities for further improvement that you would otherwise have if you and your feedback readers were still on the same page there.

And then the last two points that I want to mention here is that, as we've talked about in several episodes before, breaks are helpful. It's nice to take a step back, take a breather, refresh your energy. And then also, it can be very helpful to start working on shifting gears at this stage in the process. We talked in early episodes about the importance of shifting gears from drafting brain, from that creative letting things flow mindset, into one that is more critical and more prepared to review things and make edits. Now it's time for a second shift where we're shifting out of editing and more into packaging and marketing and those sort of mindsets and topics to put your energy into.

Agnes: So, do you feel like there's one or two big things writers should do instead while waiting on feedback? I know you just mentioned one.

Rebecca: Yeah. I suggest that with this time, if you're open to it, and if it's something that you want to do, you start writing, or at least plan out, some kind of lead magnet. Especially if you're a first-time author, especially if you're working on the first book in a series. What a lead magnet is, if you're not familiar with that term, is usually a piece of writing that you can give away for free to get people to give you a try. It's like a little teaser taste test at Costco. It gives them a little bit of an understanding for your style and what kind of genre, etc., that you're writing about so that they will then go and buy the series. And if you have a long series, sometimes the first book in the series is your lead magnet. But, again, if it's your first book in the series, that's not really an option. You still want to sell that book for a profit, at least a slim one. So, having a related novella, or a bonus epilogue, or bonus scenes in the book from a different POV kind of thing can be great in getting readers to sort of sign up to your newsletter, or to your Patreon, your Kickstarter, your social media, whatever that happens to be.

And then the second thing that I very specifically recommend you work on while you're waiting to get your feedback back is your blurb. Like I mentioned in the last episode, you should have some blurb to present to potential beta readers, or to an editor. As that can be very helpful in showing them what they're getting into, or what you were going for with the story, so that they can help make sure that the reality of what you wrote matches that. But this is a great opportunity to sit down, when you're telling yourself you can't actually be working on the book, and really rework it and polish it and get it into the best shape that you can.

And also, I want to talk a little bit more about the lead magnets, because I think that people tend to go off in this odd direction of, well, I'll just write a short story, and that'll be my lead magnet. There are a few specifics around the lead magnets that I like to point out to folks who are doing that. First of all, I recommend that it have a few distinct qualities. First of all, that it be related to the series. So, for example, my lead magnet novella is written in the same world, with the same sort of generation. And there are a couple of secondary characters that cross over, and then the main couple in the novella do become secondary characters later in the series. So having it tie in, or at least be said in the same world and roughly the same place so that you can introduce things like magic system and worldbuilding and that kind of stuff, is very helpful. I also recommend that it have a good hook at the end. So, I've talked about my soapbox on cliffhangers in the past—a lead magnet novella is a great place to lean pretty heavily into having a cliffhanger, because its entire job is to get people to go, I need more of this, I'm going to go start reading this full series, or this author's standalone, whatever the case is. I also recommend that even if it's a short lead magnet, even if it's flash fiction, so up to 10,000 words, or a single chapter bonus kind of thing, make sure that it delivers emotion and any other qualities that you want to sort of showcase. So, this might be your world building, this might be character development, obviously at a very small scale, depending on how short it is, but make sure that you're still delivering something in that bonus piece. It shouldn't just be fluff. On the other side of things, I very, very strongly recommend that you avoid spoilers in any bonus content. And I've seen this in a couple novellas or short stories that I've edited for folks. If you're going to give away the climax of your series in your novella lead magnet? That’s a big problem, and you really shouldn't do that. So, I recommend prequel novellas as lead magnets, because then you're not spoiling anything, or if you're going to do a giveaway like a bonus epilogue, that’s not necessarily something that you can advertise ahead to get people into this series, but that I recommend linking, let's say, at the end of book one, so that people will sign up to your mailing list then, without spoiling the first book in the series kind of thing. The reason I recommend doing this now, in this stage, is also, very specifically because you still want to get your bonus content edited. Probably just copy, line-edited, if it's just a chapter. Probably dev or beta as well if it's a full novella. But at a very minimum, if you can have it drafted while your main book is getting structurally edited, then you can toss this bonus piece into whatever your word count is that you're getting a line editor, or a copy editor, or a proofreader to look at.

And then a little bit more on the blurb topic. I'm sorry, I'm a little bit all over the place today. I know that a lot of authors hate writing blurbs, and that's totally fine. So, I do want to just mention that getting professional blurbs written for you is an option. I recommend strongly trying to get that tacked on to a professional edit that you're paying for, be that a developmental editor or a line editor. In that case, the person is actually reading the whole book. And as an add-on, it's usually cheaper than trying to get it done as a standalone service by a company that specializes in that, and those professionals aren't going to read your book. They just aren't. What they're going to do is they're going to give you a questionnaire that you're going to fill out, and you're going to be expected to be able to list things like, what is the climax? What is the crisis? What is the starting point? What is the antagonist's arc in 10 words or less? What are your major tropes, all of these things. And then that professional is just going to put them into the right kind of template. Because of this, I generally recommend at least trying to go the DIY route first. And on that topic, I will recommend the same resource that I always recommend, which is the book How to Write a Sizzling Synopsis by Brian Cohen, and I will be sure to link that in the show notes.

Agnes: You know, I'm so glad that you were talking about the novella thing, because I have actually thought about that several times, and as you were talking, I finally figured out exactly where I wanted to go. Which is interesting because it was not one that has been on my radar, and then all of a sudden it was like a lightbulb moment. I'm like, Yay! Inspiration!

Rebecca: Heck yeah!

Agnes: Anyway, is there anything else that we could be working on as well?

Rebecca: Yeah, absolutely. So, first on the list here is work on your series considerations. So, work on planning out the further books in your series so that you have a clear understanding of where things go after the end of the one that you're currently working on. If you're already deep into a series, go back and re-read the past books in this series while you're waiting on the beta or dev feedback, somewhat to just maintain that energy and keep your interest in continuing this project going—but also to make sure that you're not introducing series-level plot holes that perhaps you've missed on previous rounds of editing. I also recommend that you take this opportunity to really make a list of all of the open loops that you've left at the end of the book that you're working on, and take that list and go write it down, or apply it, whatever feels right, to the later series ideas and planning, again, if you're writing in a series.

I also just want to touch on real quick here that a good chunk of this series and these ideas about story structure can absolutely be applied to planning another book, or a next book, or the rest of this series. It’s generally safe to assume that the topics that we covered in Episode 1 and 2, essentially audience and genre, will be the same across a whole series. That's typically recommended, because if someone likes the genre and they are the right audience for book one in a series, you kind of want to keep catering to that same audience and delivering the same genre all the way through. But, if you want to try to take some of these series episodes and apply it to the planning or drafting stages, I personally think that episodes 3 through 11 are going to be the most helpful in those planning, outlining, and brainstorming stages, so feel free to go back and revisit those while you're waiting on your feedback. Lastly, the thing that I recommend doing while you're waiting in this sometimes awful interim of going, oh my god, are they going to like the book? is start thinking about the next steps beyond the self-editing and where you want to go. Finding and planning the professionals, whatever comes after when you're ready to really start moving towards publication.

Agnes: Do you mind going just a little bit more into exactly what next step should be on the radar as far as series and stuff?

Rebecca: Sure. So, this is going to be a little bit different depending on if you're going traditional or indie. Speaking mostly from the indie side of things, you’re going to need editors. So, after developmental you need to at least do a copy editor. If you don't pay for any other professional editing in the entire process, you need to pay a professional copy editor. If you have more resources, if you feel it's needed, whatever the case may be, you can also consider hiring a line editor between dev and copy. What a developmental editor does is look at structure, world, plot, characters, that kind of stuff. A line editor is going to look at how you present them. So, what is your paragraph structure? Are you getting into too much purple prose to a higher degree than a dev will give you feedback on? They’re going to help with the flow of the language, and the beauty of how you express yourself kind of stuff. And then a copy editor is more for typos, grammar, and punctuation. Which is kind of the baseline for publication. Beyond that, you can also do a proofread after that, and hire a proofreader to do that.

Beyond editing, you also want to start looking for cover artists to get a professional cover done. Like I mentioned a minute ago, if you can pay for only one thing, get a copy editor. If you can pay for two things, it should be a copy editor and a professional cover. A cover is going to be the first thing that any and every potential reader sees about your book. Long before you get the opportunity to show them how valuable your story is through them reading it, long before you even get the chance to try to convince them, “hey, I think you'll like this book” with your blurb, they’re going to have a half-second impression of your cover and make their decision from there. So, do a lot of research into the cover artists that you want to use. Make sure that you can communicate well with them, check out their portfolio, all of these kind of things. And this is the time when you should start looking for that kind of thing rather than 6 months down the road, when you're actually ready to publish, and you're like, oh shit, I need a cover now. A lot of cover artists tend to be booked out months ahead of time. It can take a month or two of just establishing what you're looking for, having them do the art, doing revision rounds, all that kind of stuff.

Related to that, you might also look for some character artists. If you want to do pre-orders, or a Kickstarter, or just have swag and merchandise to sell or give away, a lot of authors will try to find someone who's willing to do a couple of sketches of their protagonists, or maybe the climactic moment in their story, whatever that is. So again, this is a great opportunity to go research how you find them, if there are any whose style you really like, or that are highly recommended, get on their waitlist and look at commissioning them.

You can also start looking at building your author website. You kind of need one, that's really all I'm going to say about that. Same thing for social media accounts, same thing for setting up an email newsletter.

And you might also want to start looking at the sign-up process for the sales platforms or aggregators, so Draft 2 Digital, Amazon, IngramSpark, anything like that, they're going to have a sign-up process where you have to make an account, might have to jump through some hoops of verifying your identity. And again, it's better to do that now, while you have downtime, than later when you're stressed about getting everything together for publication.

Lastly, I want to address formatting a little bit here. If you're going to do your publication-ready formatting yourself with—Vellum or Atticus are kind of the two big softwares. There are also free ones, like through Draft2Digital or Reedsy. If you're going to do the DIY version, don’t worry about that yet. That's way down the road, that's after dev and line and copy and proofing. Only then do you get to the DIY formatting. If you want to pay someone to do professional formatting for you, this is a great opportunity to research your options, vet professionals, shop your options, and again, get on their waitlist if they have one and that's relevant.

Agnes: So, I know this is probably outside the scope of self-editing series, but how should we be preparing for these steps now, like you were talking about?

Rebecca: At this stage, like I've mentioned, it's mostly about finding your options, researching exactly what you want and what you're looking for and what is reasonable to ask for, vetting the different options, picking the best one, and booking them. Again, get on their waitlist, get a date on the calendar for when they will be able to work on this project for you. It can also just be about finding the right search terms. If you're really, really new to this, especially around formatting and cover artists and that sort of stuff, I suggest looking through those comp titles that hopefully you still have a list of from very, very early on in this series. You can go to the acknowledgements page, or the copyright page, and you will often see their editors and their artists, particularly cover artists, listed and acknowledged there. So, go find books in your genre, in your niche, in your sub-sub-subgenre whose cover you love, and see if you can find a name, and then go find that person's website.

Which is kind of my next point, which is: don't work with professionals who don't have websites. It's a really low bar, and if a professional does not have a website that they can send you to that is clearly their website, that should be a big red flag, and you probably don't want to work with them. Once you find their website, look through their portfolio, especially for artists. Any cover artist worth their salt should have a gallery of different covers, and there should be variety there. You should like a majority, or you should at least be able to look at it, and any covers that aren't what you're looking for, that are clearly for a different genre, you should still be able to look at it and go, that is objectively a good cover for, let's say, a cookbook, or a self-help book, whatever it is.

For the editor side of things, just look for testimonials. If there are any kind of testimonials, you can try to vet them. I tend to just take their word for it, but that is totally up to you.

And then, as you advance in this process, this is a great opportunity to ask for a sample contract. If you're down to a couple preferred artists or editors, that can be a deciding factor for you. Ask for a sample contract and see if it protects both parties, if it covers all of the things like missed deadlines, or hidden fees, or that sort of stuff that matter to you, and take your time. Actually read through them while you have plenty of time, which is right now, versus feeling stressed, like you have to scroll through and just sign at the bottom later on, when you're like, “I need to get this edited to meet my deadlines” sort of thing.

And then last thing that I really want to talk about here with how to tackle these next steps is; you will get what you pay for, in a lot of cases. There are DIY options for all of these different things. You can DIY start to finish, never paying a professional a cent between drafting and publishing. You can. But you get what you pay for, and it will be better quality if you find someone to help you whose specialty is doing exactly and precisely and nichely that thing. And then, yeah, again, I'm just going to come back and mention one more time, prioritize. If you have a limited budget, prioritize. And I know it sounds weird to hear me saying this as a developmental editor, but, you need to prioritize copy editing and cover. Everything else needs to come below that. I would personally put a developmental edit in third. But, it is up to you where you think your strengths and weaknesses are, what you can or can't do yourself, what you can or can't get for free, like beta feedback, or maybe bartering some other skill in your life for someone to do a proofread for you, whatever that is. It's okay to prioritize, don't be stupid with how you're spending your money. If you have an unlimited budget, go wild.

Agnes: So, one of the things that I personally have… So, I have received over 100 different indie author books, and the thing that I say that I can usually tell when I'm reading what step they skipped, as far as paying. So, I do recommend, do as much as you can with paid. Readers, and that such a thing. And the other one is, is I actually would put book formatting up there. Most people, I can tell if they had—I'm sure there are people that I had no idea. Did you have a professional book formatter?

Rebecca: Nope, I did the DIY.

Agnes: I could not tell, but there are many that I can tell, and so that's one that I definitely would recommend, so that way it's nice and looks professionally formatted. Anyway, what about us who we just can't no touch our manuscript. What do you recommend if we are one of those people who are just like, I need to touch it? What would you recommend for us to do?

Rebecca: I totally get that. That has definitely been me, particularly on the first book I ever wrote. My recommendation, if you absolutely have to keep tinkering, if that's just in your personality, is read through specifically to collect favorite lines. Best quotes, things that you could put on, let's say, a query letter, if they ask for, hey, what are the top 10 quotes from your book? Or you could put on social media stuff, both of which we're going to touch on more I think it's next week, but maybe the week after. Also, keep an eye out for bonus content options as you're reading through. Maybe pay attention, okay, well, I skip a big chunk of time here, maybe I could actually write out an interesting scene that happens off-screen in the main book and offer that as a bonus. Maybe you come up with ideas for, okay, well, this is a fantastic scene, maybe it's the climax of the book. I would love to write this scene from my other POV in a dual POV as well, and offer that alternate sort of perspective and personality on this massive scene to my readers. And very similarly, look for image ideas. If you're going to hire a character artist, or get book art done beyond the cover, having some idea of what scenes in your book are very visually interesting or that you could really play with and describe to this artist is a great thing to bear in mind. So, if you need to keep reading essentially what I'm suggesting is that you don't make edits but you do engage with the work in a way that's going to help you have more lists in place, more resources, more ideas, as you start stepping into those post-editing stages.

Agnes: So how does this all count as part of the self-editing process, since that is the focus of this series?

Rebecca: Knowing when not to edit is important, and I think I've made that point pretty obvious in this episode so far. But there is going to be one more big push of self-editing after you get your feedback notes back from your beta readers and your dev editor. So, I wanted to make sure that we do actually cover the entire self-editing process, and that happens to include covering the gap in that before you actually reach the end, which is largely the point of this particular episode. Especially since, in reality, this step of handing off your work and getting feedback on it is likely to take two to six weeks, and just twiddling your thumbs while you wait can be absolute torture if you haven't given any thought to what you should do during that time but you do know that you should be hands-off.

Agnes: So, I know one of the things that I did when I sent it off to you was actually making character sketches, but that was a little bit earlier in the stage.

But that was something that I did to make sure that I had… I went through and wrote all the descriptions I have for each person, just making sure that there weren't any inconsistencies. Again, you’d want to be careful of actually editing those consistencies, because then you might go into a whole wormhole. Anyway, if truly not doing anything while we are waiting to get feedback is actually what would work better for us, or what we want to do, is that okay? And especially if we schedule other life stuff into that gap, So, literally doing nothing towards our book.

Rebecca: Yes. All of my advice here is for the people who, like me, can’t stand to completely disengage for those probably 2-6 weeks. If completely forgetting that this exists in your life for that time works for you, go for it. Like I mentioned very early on in this episode, taking breaks is really healthy. And if you're the kind of person who this works for, taking that step back and really letting your mind and your body and your spirit and your creativity reset for those weeks can be very, very helpful. It's entirely up to the individual to make the call which option works better for them. But I feel like I have more advice for the folks who that doesn't work well for, which is why we're talking about this today.

Agnes: Okay, so what if we are not those that are working on the side stuff, and we're not the person who decides not to touch it? And we decide to edit our work, and not take your advice? What should we do with that?

Rebecca: Sure, I'm glad we're covering all of our bases here. I, first of all, before you touch it, recommend strongly that you save the exact version that you sent to your beta readers or your developmental editor as sort of a time capsule archive version. You want to be able to reference if a beta reader says, hey, the third line in the fifth paragraph on page 156 feels off to me, you need to be able to go in and actually track what sentence they're talking about, which is going to get messed up if you continue tinkering while it's off with them. So, if you're going to keep tinkering, make sure that you've saved the exact version that you sent them for referencing exact things like that.

Beyond that, I recommend keeping a list somewhere separate from your manuscript where you just make a note of any big or big-ish changes you make. So, if you end up, let's say, going into Chapter 6, and doing some heavy, let's say, just slimming down, so you're removing a lot of exposition, you're removing a lot of description and shoe leather. Make a note that says, Chapter 6, Heavy Line Level Rewrites. If you end up adding in a plotline or taking out a character, make a note that just says, added drowning plotline, removed shopkeeper character, things like that. So that when you're going through the feedback that you got on the earlier version, if someone mentions something, you don't have to try to remember, did I already deal with that? You have a list of what you dealt with while it was off with them, and it's going to save you a lot of frustration and mental load and all of that kind of things.

I also recommend that you take this opportunity, if you're going to keep editing, to take an approach that you haven't tried yet. Maybe that's reading the book backwards, paragraph by paragraph, like I've mentioned. Maybe that's trying text-to-speech or reading it out loud. Use this opportunity, instead of going through it the exact same way you already have over and over, to do something different that will give you a different perspective and perhaps take your self-editing to another level instead of just beating a dead horse, so to speak.

Next on my list of thoughts here is don't beat yourself up when you find more issues in the version that you've already sent out. When, not if. You will find more things that you wish you had changed before you sent it off to your beta readers or your developmental editor. That’s normal. Literally everyone does that. The beta readers and dev editor are not judging you for it, they're not thinking less of you for it. Take a deep breath, change it if you want to, make a note, and move on. Try not to have that moment of, “Oh, no, I can't believe I left this typo in.” That's not helpful, that's not productive. Let it go.

And then, kind of related to that, don’t bug your outside readers about issues if you find them, or if you forgot to mention a thing. If it's a big deal, if you forgot to mention something like, Oh, by the way, there's this massive trigger warning on it, or, oh, by the way, I know that Chapter 17 is only half-written, just ignore that, or, oh, by the way, I haven't actually finished writing the climax, bear with me—that's fine, but if it's a little thing, like, oh, I misnamed this character in Chapter 6, or there was a typo here I need to clarify what that sentence meant… don’t bother them. Take a deep breath. Take a step back, pretend like you weren't obsessively going through your book still while they were working on it.

And then lastly on my suggestions for if you're going to keep editing while it's away, make sure that you mix in activities for yourself that refill your creative cup around the project, so that you aren't just draining yourself further right before what is probably going to be the hardest part of this whole process, specifically, consuming, processing, and then applying outside feedback. As hard as you might have felt some of these self-editing steps up to this point have been, trying to deal with outside constructive criticism on your book is going to be harder. So, even if you continue tinkering, even if you continue editing while it's away getting that done on it, also revisit the original inspirations, take some time to do a different kind of creativity, whatever you need to bolster yourself in preparation for this next last significant hurdle that we're going to talk about in next week's episode.

Ages: Well, thank you so much for your insight. It has helped me so much, as always.

Rebecca: Delightful, and I am excited to hear what your epiphany was about a lead magnet or novella thing, so I'm sure we will chat after this. And yeah, next week, like I said, we're going to go over best practices and supportive advice for receiving, processing, and implementing outside feedback on your manuscript. For now, I really want to thank everyone following along with this series. If you know any other authors who are nearing the end of their first draft, or struggling with revisions or rewriting their novel, please send them our way. I would love to help more writers understand and finish the process of self-editing. Thank you for joining me today, Agnes. I will see you all next week.

Agnes: And if you happen to be sending your stuff off to a beta reader or are looking for a developmental editor right now, there’s a great one I know that you can find at hartboundediting.com. Thank you again.

Rebecca: Bye.

Rebecca: Thank you so much for listening to the Hart Bound Editing Podcast. I look forward to bringing you more content to help you make your good story great so it can change lives and change your world. Follow along to hear more or visit my website, linked in the description, to learn how I can help you and your story to flourish.

See you next time!