Triage Editing

What's triage editing? According to Dave Wolverton/Dave Farland who taught an excellent workshop on editing at this year's Life, the Universe, and Everything (LTUE) Science Fiction and Fantasy writing conference this past February at BYU, it's the first stage of editing your rough draft and that's what I'm currently doing to my book. This is the time I go back over each scene and make the necessary large adjustments many times with a hacksaw and lots of gauze. Dave says he goes over a draft at least six times, for different reasons each time, to get things where they need to be. I expect that's what I'll be doing to polish up this current piece. Wherever you are at in your current WIP, keep it up and don't give up. Hack those adverbs. Strike down that dreaded passive voice. Make your manuscript shine.