Short Answer: No.
Longer Answer: No. With a Few Words of Warning.
It’s a Question Many Writers Have Asked Themselves. Especially Those Trying to Publish a Novel on a Shoestring Budget or With Little to No Help From the Outside.
Do Indie Authors Need An Editor? You’ve probably asked your friends and family. Maybe you’ve gone into Facebook groups or just shouted to the ether in Twitterland. Maybe you’ve polled random strangers at the gas station or grocery store. And everyone you’ve talked to has probably told you it’s imperative. Every stupid blog post has told you it’s necessary. Every editor has (of course) said you can’t publish without one.
But you really don’t need one. Really.
How do I know? Because I’ve read authors whose work was better than 99% of the self-published material out there. Better than most of the traditionally published work out there too, come to think of it. Also, I’ve done it myself. So I know it can be done.
The downside? It’s a lot more work.I’m talking, like, four or five times more work. For every one read-through by a professional editor, you’ll need to go over your own work a minimum of four or five times. The reason for this is simple, if you understand human nature and psychology:
When you read your own work, you have a much harder time differentiating what you meant to write from what you actually wrote. In fact, you probably can’t distinguish between the two at all, so tied are you to the version of the book in your head.
From an editorial perspective, that’s, uh, bad.
From an indie author perspective, it can be deadly. Typically, independent artists don’t have the benefit of a long-standing diehard fan base who will forgive them their sins of grammar and syntax. You’re on a short leash as is, and every avoidable error decreases your chances of gaining new readers.
It can also be damaging to the psyche of a writer. Think about your self-confidence like it’s the Enterprise’s shields on Star Trek. They can only take so many hits before they start to lose their effectiveness. Your writing confidence works the same way. If you read through your work too many times, continuing to pick up new errors along the way, you’ll get discouraged. Worse, you’ll lose faith in your abilities, both as a writer AND an editor. That won’t do you or your readers any good when it comes to your current or future works.
As important (or maybe more important, depending on your perspective), it can give you a fictional existential crisis. I don’t mean “fictional” in the sense of unreal, but in the sense of the make-believe world of your novel. Fictitious worlds have to have rules just like the real one does. In reality, we have physics. In fiction, we have the writer’s keenly observed and effectively communicated rules.
The more the Creator doubts Her or His ability to either observe keenly or communicate effectively, the more things fall apart. It’s like if we were to wake up one day and gravity suddenly repelled instead of attracted. If you start to think too much about just how exactly gravity works in YOUR world, you’re in trouble.
Take Star Wars for instance. (I know, I’m advertising my sci-fi geekiness for all to see.) The rules of the world were set up in the first movie and filled in throughout the rest of the original trilogy. We all accepted how The Force worked and the role of the Jedi in the galaxy. Then, years later, we have the prequels and midi-chlorians thrown at us, and everyone said, “Hey, wait a second. This isn’t the world I was conditioned to expect from the first trilogy.”
For anyone reading this who has ever finished a long-form narrative, you know how tricky it can be. Lots of people talk about writing, but to actually finish a book is an achievement. The sense of accomplishment a writer feels is usually tempered (or downright ruined) by the fact that most first drafts just aren’t very good.
I know. That’s harsh of me to say, but it’s true. We dedicate anywhere from a couple months to several years laboring over our manuscript. We each have good days and bad days over the course of time it takes to complete the story. Perhaps some days we felt sick and other days we felt great. Maybe we fell in love, or got a divorce. Maybe we got fired, or got our dream job.
The point is, each of these days — good and bad — contributed to the story that is contained in the pages of that first draft. When you read it, you need to prepare yourself. Some passages won’t flow well from scene to scene, or even within a single scene. Some characters will gain an accent or lose an accent or tell one person he’s from Denver and another he’s from Philly.
None of this makes you a bad writer. It just makes you human. You ARE a writer because you did the work. You finished. Have a celebratory drink just for that. Finishing is a very difficult thing to do. And the really sad part about it is this: finishing a bad novel is often just as hard as finishing a good one.
So you have this crappy first draft, and you plow into the editing process with gusto. You say, “I don’t need an editor or even any beta readers. This is gonna be a one-man (or -woman) show.” You get through the first rewrite with a migraine and copious notes, but you finish it. You might even allow yourself a second, lesser sense of accomplishment than after the first draft.
Then you go in again, and you realize there’s so much you missed. It’s not just obscure or arcane items either. These are in-your-face, third-grade English class errors that you missed. You know you’re better than that, so what happened?
The same thing that happens to all of us: you had an infinite number of competing realities in your head. Every conversation that you thought could go one way or the other; every choice that had a positive and negative consequence. They all are competing in your mind, their Creator’s mind, and screaming that they’re the real “reality”.
When you edit your own work, you are editing every single permutation of the story that ended up making it onto the page. You’re not just reading the draft you wrote, but every draft you MIGHT have written along the way. And that, my friends, is a big ask for anyone, no matter how gifted you are at writing or editing.
If you do decide to “go it alone,” I strongly suggest you have a well-rounded and responsive group of beta readers. I also suggest you really look at what you’re asking of yourself and honestly assess whether you’re up to the task.
Writers tend to be perfectionists, and you are most likely going to be the worst boss you ever worked for. Beyond that, most writers don’t like editors (don’t worry, I don’t take it personally). They may enjoy going out for drinks or talking shop over dinner. They may even like us personally. But they know that when push comes to shove, we’ll make them kill their darlings. We are the enemy.
Are you ready to be your own worst enemy?