This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the 451st episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors Podcast.

Since I have been commenting a lot lately on the fact that I'm working on finishing first round

edits on my portal fantasy sequel

Dreambreaker. Someone asked me what this early editing process looks like for me.

These days because of the work I put in up front on outlining, my first drafts are usually pretty structurally solid.

So this means I don't generally have to do any major rewriting in my initial edits. So these edits, which are three rounds, happen

right after I finish the first draft before I send the book on to my beta readers and editors.

And really at this point I'm just

tidying up the manuscript before sending it on.

The first of these three edits is, as I've mentioned,

primarily about tightening word count.

The second, which is what I'm still working on right now, is about

polishing prose and snipping off any ragged ends that happened due to the cutting and

trimming in the first edit.

And the third and final of these initial edits is strictly proofreading.

I will get my computer or Kindle to read aloud to me while I read along,

so I can hopefully give my betas as clean a copy

as possible.

And then I get to take a break from it for a while.

In other news, let me say that today's podcast is

sponsored by Demonsa.com the excellent company who produces all of my book

covers. So how do you shop for books? Do you spend every waking hour in your local book store

...