You spend thousands of hours producing a manuscript that captures the picture you had in your head. Reaching the end brings relief and satisfaction — but also curiosity and doubts.
I don’t consider myself a painting artist, but I’ve produced a few paintings, mostly by copying existing works or photos. While I was working on them, completely absorbed in getting the details right, I couldn’t really see the whole thing. I had to take a step back and almost ignore the details to see the overall picture. Writing feels much the same. When I read an entire manuscript for the first time, I begin to see how each part contributes to the whole. That’s when I start trimming rough edges, trying to make the parts work better together, and to refine the message I had in mind.
Anyone might say: “Of course, that’s what you’d do with any piece of writing — even a letter or an email.” True. But when you’re dealing with tens of thousands of words, the challenge grows almost exponentially.
An average manuscript contains around eighty thousand words. Reviewing something of that size is both intellectually and practically demanding — even if you’re the author, perhaps especially if you’re the author. We’re all partly blind to our own thoughts and ideas, and even more blind when writing about them. A full-length book makes this strikingly clear.
I read my second book ten times before I asked a friend to review it. By the time I signed off for publication, I’d read it more than twenty times. You’d think it would be close to perfect. Unfortunately, it rarely works that way. Even with digital writing aids, which help a lot, they can’t make us immune to mistakes — sometimes big ones.
Those who’ve been there know the torture of finding a flaw in a finished piece of writing. How could you have missed something so obvious after twenty readings? Experience teaches us techniques to minimise errors, but even that’s no guarantee of a flawless manuscript. Sooner or later, we have to let someone else read what we think is “final.”
That’s when the real test begins. Seeing your words through another person’s eyes — sometimes with completely unexpected interpretations of sentences, paragraphs, or even entire sections — is both enlightening and overwhelming. Yet each time we endure this discomfort, we gain more agility to move forward.
All writers do this, but some do it more often and adapt more quickly. That’s when writing stars begin to rise: not because their words are perfect, but because they’ve learned to see their own work with fresh eyes — and to keep refining without losing heart.