Write with the door closed. Edit with the door open.

They say writing is 10% typing and 90% murdering your darlings. The real question is: when do you let someone else join the killing spree? Is there a clear line between writing and editing, or are they just different flavors of the same glorious torment??

Great ideas don’t just grow—they survive, but only when you cut away everything trying to strangle them.

On July 27th, 2023, I sent the final manuscript to Sam, who you’ll remember was the bigwig agent who agreed to send my book out to publishers once we’d finished editing. Man, that was 497 days ago. What have I been doing since then? Why has this taken so long?

The manuscript was still at 90,000 words, even after all the back and forth. I wanted to get it down to ~75,000 words, and while there is no right or wrong length for a novel, I knew there was still plenty of fat worth trimming.

But what did it really matter? I had a world-class agent ready to start sending the book to publishers. It was everything I ever wanted. As my agent and I began talking about what this process would look like, the glittering picture became more and more ominous.

It could easily take a year and a half to find a buyer. Once that happened, it would take another three months of contract negotiation. Then, once a deal was inked and some publishing house owned the hardcover North American rights, it could take another two years for the books to hit shelves. Publishing is a slow, slow process. Everything takes forever. But while the prospect of waiting another three years for the book to arrive on shelves was sufficiently depressing, that wasn’t the worst of it.

We projected an advance of $50,000 if we were lucky. Check out volume 1 of this series for a more detailed outline of publishing advances and how they work. If I sold the rights for $50,000, I’d earn roughly $1 in royalties per book sold, but only after the advance was paid back. Which means (for all you mathematicians here) that I’d need to sell 50,000 copies of the book before seeing another dollar. But even that wasn’t the biggest issue. The publisher would print at most two hundred copies in their first run, giving roughly half to libraries. No matter how much marketing I’d tell them I could do or how well I could run an Amazon sponsored ads campaign, they’d print the number of books that fit with their existing business operations.

That bothered me … a lot. Not only would I be surrendering the rights to the book (and ceding creative control, and waiting 2-3 years for the book’s release), but I’d be unable to effectively advertise the book because we’d have too few actual units in circulation.

It was around that time I started looking into hybrid presses: High-quality publishing houses that gave authors more control and higher royalties in exchange for the author sharing the printing and publishing costs. Again, this differs from self-publishing in a few key areas, and again I’ll point you to the first article in this series.

It was also around this time that I finally heard back from another agent who I’d submitted to many months earlier: Dan Lazar.

Dan is an awesome agent from Writer’s House in NYC, one of the most storied New York literary agencies. He liked my book, but said it wasn’t for him … he was focusing on graphic novels, because that’s where the money’s at (why didn’t anyone tell me sooner?).

He was willing to get on the phone with me, which, if you know anything about submitting to literary agents, is a really big deal. Dan and I spoke for a little while, and he gave me the name of an editor to reach out to. I told him that I was sort of done with editing, and he said, no you’re not sort of done with anything until you meet this guy Jim Thomas.

Boy, was Dan right.

The next week I got on the phone with one Jim Thomas, a freelance editor who spent twenty years at Random House. I’ve worked with my share of editors over the years, and when you meet someone who is just so authentically engaged, so insightful, so skilled, you just pick up on it right away.

I started working with Jim. But it wasn’t line editing like I had done with previous editors. We spent the first month together just talking about story. Understanding the characters. Reviewing the plot in tremendous detail.

What was supposed to be a one-month engagement turned into something much more substantial. For the first time, I was working with someone who really understood the book and who brought to the table substantial ideas for how to shorten, tighten, and polish the entire architecture, from start to finish.

When we first started, Jim’s feedback hit me like a brick. “The book’s trying to do too many things, all at once,” he wrote in one of his early reports. “The material isn’t bad, but it’s quantity, framing, and focus that are creating overload. It needs a center, not a master story that wants to be everything”.

He wasn’t wrong. My manuscript was bloated, confused, and a little too enamored with its own cleverness. Jim’s first challenge to me was brutal in its simplicity: “Simplify, Isaac. The reader won’t miss what doesn’t belong.”

I resisted, of course. “If I deconstruct the story too much and Band-Aid the gaps, we won’t be any better off,” I wrote back in a moment of creative panic. Jim’s response? “It’s about clarity, not compromise. You’re smart enough to make the simple work beautifully.”

“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.” —Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch

The hardest part wasn’t cutting words—it was killing my darlings. Jim didn’t just trim the fat; he brought out a scalpel for the heart of the story. One of our most heated debates revolved around Flint Eldritch, my villain. I’d piled layers on him: he was part dark magician, part tragic antihero, and part world-destroyer. “Flint can have layers without becoming a layer cake,” Jim wrote. “Let’s pick two—three, tops—and really sell them.”

Reworking Flint wasn’t just a technical exercise—it forced me to rethink what my story was about. Jim pushed me to see the bigger picture. “What does Georgie believe about himself in the beginning that he no longer believes by the end?” he asked during one of our email exchanges. “That’s the spine of your story. Everything else is decoration.”

By the time we reached the summer, the manuscript had shed nearly 15,000 words.?

I emailed Jim in disbelief: “How is it possible that cutting this much made the story feel bigger, not smaller?”?

Jim’s response was as blunt as it was affirming: “Because the clutter’s gone. The story finally has room to breathe.”

He challenged me to think about the story’s mechanics in terms of its emotional payoff. One pivotal conversation revolved around the Aetherquill, the magical pen central to the plot. “We’re building the train tracks, not the station,” Jim reminded me. “Get the mechanics right, and the story will run on its own.”

One of the biggest shifts came as we honed Georgie’s arc in the climax. I’d written a dozen versions of the final confrontation with Flint Eldritch, and none of them quite landed. Jim’s feedback zeroed in on the emotional core of the scene. “This isn’t about Georgie defeating Flint,” he wrote. “It’s about Georgie embracing his power to shape the narrative—literally and figuratively. That’s what the Aetherquill represents.”

I reworked the scene again, stripping away unnecessary spectacle and focusing on Georgie’s internal growth. Jim’s response to the revised draft was a rare moment of unfiltered enthusiasm: “You nailed it. Georgie’s choices feel earned, and the stakes are real. This is the kind of payoff readers will remember.”

Jim wasn’t just an editor; he was a mentor who cared about the craft. His notes often referenced broader storytelling principles, echoing lessons from McKee and Vogler. “Remember, all great stories are about transformation,” he reminded me during one discussion on Flint’s backstory. It was a subtle nudge to connect my characters’ journeys to the universal truths that make stories resonate.

By the end of the process, the manuscript felt like an entirely new book. Tighter. More focused. And yet, truer to my original vision than I’d ever thought possible.?

The pain of killing my darlings was nothing compared to the joy of seeing the story finally come alive.

Jim’s final note to me, after I’d sent him what I thought was the finished manuscript, was vintage Jim: “It’s there. The heart, the stakes, the magic—it’s all there. Now, go do the hardest thing a writer can do: leave it alone.”

Editing isn’t about finding flaws—it’s about uncovering truth. As McKee writes in Story, “Story is about principles, not rules.” Jim taught me to stop chasing perfection and start chasing resonance. Vogler’s concept of the mentor rings true here as well: editors like Jim guide us through the inmost cave of our stories, forcing us to confront the weaknesses we’d rather ignore.

And if you’re lucky enough to work with someone like Jim, you’ll come out the other side not just with a better manuscript, but as a better writer.

Editing is hard. It’s messy, painful, and humbling. But it’s also where the magic happens.?

Stephen King, my favorite author, said it best: “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.”?

The first draft is for you—it’s raw, instinctual, and selfish. It’s where you let your imagination off the leash, free to chase down every wild idea. But the second draft? That’s for your reader. It’s where you throw the doors open, let in the light, and ask yourself the hardest question of all: Is this worth their time?

The reader doesn’t want your boring crap. They don’t care about the subplot you’re clinging to because it was fun to write. They care about resonance. About archetypes and expectations that echo through their soul, the way all great stories do. Editing is where you strip away the noise, hone the story to its essence, and build a bridge between your private world and theirs. It’s glorious work.?

As King says, “To write is human, to edit is divine.”?

He’s right.?

Editing is where you stop being just a writer and start becoming a storyteller.