I have never been confused for a handyman. My most advanced project involved hanging a television on a wall without injuring myself. For a long time, I looked in that room with trepidation, scared the TV would greet me from its final resting place on my basement floor.

Though lacking significant exposure to tool sheds, when asked what editing a novel was like, I immediately thought about working with wood. Even with brief exposure to the process years ago, it appeared to be a perfect example. As I recall, you may start by taking rough chops at a slab of timber with an axe. As the wood approaches the desired size, you may switch to finer tools like chisels to shave off excess wood and shape the object. Eventually, you’ll be sanding your completed piece to make it feel polished to the touch.

It seems that editing a novel is a similarly structured process. Working through the first draft is akin to hitting a slab of timber with an axe to create a starting point with material you can mold. In the following few drafts, pieces of the story are rewritten, whole sections of the novel are cut out and replaced. At this point, you are still taking rough cuts at your pages with large chisels, knowing that you will have a chance for more precision later. As you advance through more drafts—I journeyed through 15 Superhighway drafts—the work becomes more focused. Instead of working on pages or paragraphs, you begin working on sentence structure and ultimately word choice. Working on “how you say” versus “what you say” is the part of the editing process comparable to sanding down your wooden piece.

Finally, once a handywoman finishes her woodworking project, she will see imperfections others won’t notice because of her familiarity with the piece. Similarly, an author, even when the novel is in print, will still read her work, noticing deficiencies and opportunities for improvement.