Good Morning All,
Don’t take what I’m saying here to heart because it is not meant to be mean, it is meant to be informative. No matter how great, amazing, or awe-inspiring your first draft is, edit it before you show anyone. Take this advice and you will thank me for it because your first draft is always trash. Trust me if you leave that thing to sit for a few weeks and then go back and read, you will not see what you saw when you first finished it.
Please, save yourself and edit it, it will save you a lot of heartbreak. Go through it and make it better before anyone else’s eyes see it. Your writing, however great and perfect in itself, is trash the first time through.
Believe me, I was there, I had just finished my manuscript for my short story. I was so proud of it. I was bragging to my boyfriend about how good it was going to be when he read it. Then a week later I read it and it wasn’t the same. I still loved it because the idea was great, but it needed a lot of work still. So, I went back through it and fixed the things that I noticed sounded awkward.
Then after about two run-throughs he read a bit and gave me some advice on what to say where things still sounded a bit off. But you have no idea how glad I was that I had read it before him because if he had read it first before I went through it, I think he may have told me that he couldn’t be with me (yes, that is a joke, but it isn’t too far off). The first draft, however good I thought it was, was trash. A more glamorous, less smelly form, but still trash.
So do yourself and me a favor, just edit it. Even if you don’t want to if you don’t like editing. At least go through it once. When you do you will notice all the things you dislike about it and that others will dislike about it.
Celine Rose Marie