The problem? Stacy was so eager to get her work onto the market, that she didn't polish it enough.

Let’s think about this a minute (eager young writer). I know that you've just written a masterpiece and that every word sparkles with more perfection than Edward Cullen, the vampire from Twilight, but even Stephen King had 150,000 words cut from his novel, The Stand.

If Stephen King occasionally needs the tender loving care of a machete-wielding editor, don't you think that you (eager young writer) might need it a bit more?

The bottom line is that no matter how much you love your story (original story, fanfiction, essay) there is always room for improvement. Moreover, editing your work serves a greater good:

1. It teaches you the nuts and bolts of good writing.

2. It trains bad writing mistakes out of you.

3. The more you revise and edit now, the less you have to in the future.

4. You owe it to your readers to do your best work.

Many writers evolve from the primordial soup of literature in the same way: we start out as fans, reading everything we can get our hands on. Then we begin to make up our own stories. In our first efforts, we're usually the star. Some writers never move past this phase (yes, Anita Blake, I'm looking at you).

Gradually, we move onto more complex plots. A lot of us use fanfiction as a springboard into original fiction. Some of us live with one foot in both worlds. This is a lot more accepted now than it was once.

Particularly with online fanfiction, there is a tremendous sense of self-gratification that comes with completing a story, uploading it, and having it out for the world to see. You finished! It was an uphill slog through kraken weed and bears, but you persevered and now your masterpiece Harry Potter and the Suck Leeches of Mars is out there for the world to see.

But who is going to want to read it if the spelling makes it unreadable? (As a side note, there really is a self-published book out there entitled Suck Leeches of Mars. It's quite awful.)

And who is going to want to publish it if they can't get past the first four lines without losing interest and wandering away, because they have better things to do, like organize their yogurt supply?

A lot of things do make it onto the market that should have been polished a little more. In my opinion, The Stand was a lot better before they let those 150,000 words sneak back in there. But I assume that Stephen King's editors were too busy rolling around in piles and piles of money to notice as he snuck into their offices with a roll of clear tape and a determined look on his face.

Getting back to Stacy. She developed a problem from submitting so many unpolished works to the big pro magazine. Eventually the editors rejected her work based on name recognition alone.

Yes, editors do this. I've known several throughout the years. Most of the time, their slushpile is much bigger than the slots they have room for in their publications. To get through the slush, they look for excuses to reject manuscripts.

In Stacy's case, the editor's thinking went like thus: That's Stacy Newbie. She always sends me abysmal crap. That's one less story I have to read.

Badly written fiction stories are like ugly babies. As the parent, you may love them with all your heart. But that doesn't stop other people from drawing away in horror when you show them off.

To make your story better, you've got to get in there with a hatchet (scalpel, machete, chain saw) and murder that ugly baby for the good of your readers.

In the end, you'll be glad you did.