Polish Your Fiction

Revised 2019 Edition

In Polish Your Fiction: A Quick & Easy Self-Editing Guide, writer, editor, and publisher, Jessica Bell, offers her tried and tested advice on the quickest and easiest ways to polish different areas of writing style, consistency of prose, grammar, punctuation, typography, and layout. Each section is armed with a numbered checklist for moments when writers need that “at-a-glance” reminder and nifty Microsoft Word tricks that will save time. At the end of the book there are also magnificent accounts of editorial mistakes other authors have made during their careers, to show that no matter how many times a book is edited, something always slips through, and to therefore not be so hard on oneself.

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott says a writer needs to focus on short assignments to avoid feeling overwhelmed. She refers to the one-inch picture frame on her desk and how it reminds her to focus on bite-sized pieces of the whole story. If you focus on one small thing at a time, the story will eventually come together to create a whole. The same applies to editing a manuscript. If writers focus on one aspect of the editorial process at a time, the task will seem less daunting, and piece by piece, it will come together to form a piece of very polished work.

Not only is Polish Your Fiction: A Quick & Easy Self-Editing Guide an excellent addition to any self-publishing course, but it’s also a great primary learning tool for aspiring authorpreneurs, and a great booster for more experienced authorpreneurs to get their manuscripts in excellent shape before sending their work to a professional editor.