By Alycia Morales @AlyciaMorales

You’ve just finished your manuscript. Maybe it’s your first draft and you think it’s pretty good. Maybe you’ve rewritten it five times and now you want to see if you can get it published. The next step is to hire an editor, but a lot of people skip that step. Especially a lot of self-published authors.

“What’s the problem?” you ask. The problem is, many authors have a difficult time seeing their own writing issues until someone else points them out, editors-who-are-writers included.

Whether you’re aiming for a book contract with a publishing house or you’re planning to self-publish, here are the top 10 signs that you need to hire a professional editor:

10. You’ve never let anyone else read your novel until now. Chances are you’ve made mistake.
9. Your best critics have read you’re manuscript. They include your mom, sister, best friend and high school English teacher.
8. Even an editors eyes are blind to errors after the tenth time through a manuscript.
7.  Your favorite way to finish a sentence, or a thought is …
6. A good portion of your manuscript is underlined with red squiggly lines. Spell check isn’t always relatable.
5. The happy, beautiful, fabulous, main character started walking down the lush, green, flowery path toward the white, glistening castle in the middle of the field.
4. Your novel reads like a Dick and Jane picture book.
3. Your character is depressed or reflecting on the same thing on page 1, page 3, page 10, page 25, page 86, page 101, page 240, and still on page 450.
2. God told you to write it, it’s going to sell millions of copies.

1. None of us have enough minions to do everything that needs to be done and hiring an editor will give you a much better chance at successful publication than thinking you’ve done good enough on your own because, after all, no one is perfect. Well, there was One…

PS – Today’s post was meant to illustrate a point. How many errors did you find?

Alycia W. Morales is an award-winning freelance editor and author. Her clients have won the Selah Award, BRMCWC Director’s Choice Award, and many others. Her writing has been published in Thriving Family magazine, Splickety Love, and several compilation books. She is a member of ACFW, the president of Cross n’ Pens critique group, and a BRMCWC Conference Assistant.

Alycia blogs at The Write Editing and Life. Inspired.

When she isn’t busy writing, editing, and reading, Alycia enjoys spending time with her husband and four children taking hikes in Upstate SC and NC, creating various crafts, coloring in adult coloring books, and watching TV.