WriteHive 2026 Online Conference: How to Level Up Your Self-Editing Skills
Photo by Unseen Studio on Unsplash
Now that the videos from the 2026 WriteHive online conference are posted, I’ll be sharing some of those with quick summaries. Today, I’m talking about “How to Level Up Your Self-Editing Skills.”
I’ve been editing for decades, but I always find there’s something more to learn on the topic. The vast majority of my editing these days is editing for other people, but I often find that there are techniques in editing someone else that apply to editing yourself, and vice versa!
The panelists shared a number of suggestions that are common when talking about self-editing, like getting distance from your words so you can edit them more objectively and working with hard copy if you can. But they also had a number of suggestions that I’ve heard less commonly, like approaching self-editing through one “lens” at a time–looking for plot holes on one pass, character arcs on another, etc. They also had a TON of suggestions for resources, which were a mix on ones I was familiar with and those I was not.
I particularly liked some of the suggestions the panelists gave for newer authors, including getting someone who doesn’t read your genre to read your work and tell you what doesn’t make sense to them. They also suggested keeping a book journal, in which you jot down personal notes on what you like and don’t like in books you read (including the ones you don’t finish). This seems to me like a great way that you can keep track of things you want to try or avoid without having to worry about spoiling the plot or coming across as overly negative (or positive, honestly) in a book review.
Finally, when the panelists talked about how to know that you’re done with your self-editing, they noted that it’s important to stop when you’ve written the best book you can with your current skill set. Trying to write the best book you can imagine is a surefire way to never be done, so writing YOUR personal best book for the moment is the better goal!
The panelists crammed an amazing amount of material into about 55 minutes, so this video is a relatively quick watch, though if you’re like me, you’ll be pausing it a lot to jot down notes and resource recommendations!
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