In my opinion, perfection is not possible, so yes, you can overedit.

I defy you to name a book where mistakes are non-existent. They’re usually minor mistakes, but they’re there, and they will show up in your own book no matter how much time you spend editing your manuscript. That’s not to say you should put out work full of mistakes. It’s simply that you need to accept you’re human, and mistakes are inevitable.

When you find those two misspelled words in your three-hundred-page novel, it will frustrate you, and you will never feel good about it. At some point though, you need to put your foot down on the editing process and move on. Incessant over editing becomes obsessive, and simply put you end up not making your book better, but different.

Personally, I hate editing. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Did I mention that I hate it? Reading my manuscript over and over is a tedious task. After the tenth read, I become so sick and tired of looking at it that I end up making more mistakes.

You can hire a copy editor to find the errors you miss, but finding a reliable, professional editor is like searching for a needle in a haystack. The editors I’ve worked with thus far have drained my bank account and left me wondering why I hired them.

So, when editing, try to make it as error-free as possible, but realize that at some point, you have to roll with what you have. Come to terms with the fact that it will never be perfect, and that the occasional mistake will get away from you.

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