How Long Should You Wait Before Editing Your Draft?

Get distance on your drafts before you do any editing beyond typos or grammar fixes.

I don't mean set it aside for twenty years while you pursue a career in lion taming or chartered accountancy. I mean this: when you finish a draft — chapter, essay, blog post, query letter, whatever — you are the worst possible person to edit it right now. Your brain will read what it meant to say, not what it actually said. You will miss your own nonsense every single time, and you will do so with supreme confidence.

The fix is distance. Deliberate, non-negotiable distance.

OK, but for how long?

Longer than you think. For a short piece, at least a full day or two. For a chapter, a week if you can manage it. For a full manuscript, we're talking a month, minimum. I know. I know. The deadline, the launch date, the impatience. I'm not unsympathetic. But I am inflexible on this point, because I've seen what happens when writers don't do it — and I've read those manuscripts.

The distance lets you become someone else's reader. Not you as author — you as audience. That shift is everything. Suddenly the sentence that felt so elegant reveals itself to be a bunch of $4 words doing a $1 job, or vice versa. The transition you were so proud of turns out to be a non sequitur wearing a blazer. The joke that seemed hilarious at 11 p.m. is now a liability.

This is not failure. This is the process working correctly.

OK, but what am I supposed to do in the meantime?

Start something else. Read someone else's work. Take a walk. Do not sneak back in to "just check one thing." You will not just check one thing. You will sit down, start tinkering, and lose the very distance you were trying to create.

The manuscript will be there when you get back. It's not going anywhere. I promise!

Distance doesn't just help you see the problems. It helps you see what's actually working — which, if you're anything like most writers I know, you dramatically underestimate when you're too close to the page. Cold eyes catch errors, yes. But they also recognize the good stuff more clearly, and in some ways, that's the most fruitful part of growing your self-editing skills.

Walk away. Come back fresh.

Tips Galore!