What do you Gain from Distance?
Distance can trick the mind into reading it as if for the first time and helps us to examine what a reader might take away from it.
Does it provide enough character view points? What would make it appealing to a reader? What works, what doesn't work? What's the story missing? Has it enough conflict?
You need to be able to approach it as a new reader or a critic if you are wishing to edit your own work.
The Distance of Time
You can gain distance from your work simply by letting it sit for a few months. This can give you the time to forget which bits you were really pleased with at the time of creation and just analyse what works now.
Transform it into a Physical Book
One of the things which I more recently started to do was making my novels into a physical book while in the editing stage. This can be done with KDP publishing or something similar and its really easy to get your hands on a physical copy, as long as you're happy to pay for the cost of production, postage and waiting a few days for delivery. Seeing it as a physical copy is in itself a wonderful thing for any writer. It looks professional, boosts your confidence and helps you to focus on your goals. Also if you have had a professional cover designed, it'll give you an idea of what this could look like before production, if you are intending to self publish.
Bare in mind to use styles and to keep the formatting consistent throughout the novel or it will not look its best.
Transform it into a Digital Book
If you know you'll need more editing and don't want to fork out for the small cost of buying a number of proof copies, turn it into a digital book. This helped me and I was able to read it on my phone whenever I had a spare moment. Even better, I invested in a kindle, sent it to my kindle device and found I could relax in the sunshine, make notes as I went along, as well as giving my eyes a rest from screens. It worked an absolute treat!
Using this technique, you can read it in small bites or a few chapters at a time when you're fresh and able to criticise it without any negative patterns creeping in which would hinder your effectiveness as a 'new reader' to the work.
