: Re: What are the stages to self editing? I just finished writing my first draft of my novel, and I don't quite know the states of self-editing. Right now, I'm not looking for advice on professional

@Smith147

(Mary's answer feels spot-on to me. I wanted to comment to shade setting it aside a bit, but I had just a hair too much to say...)
The point of setting it aside is to make enough distance to get around (or over) yourself and see the text closer to how it is. A month is a good place to start, but there's no one-size-fits-all gap.
Low-level editing may not take as much distance as coming to the conclusion that a scene with one of your favorite lines of dialog doesn't otherwise pull its weight. A task like cleaning up dangling references to a cut scene may be easier to get right when you're very familiar with what happens where, but spotting references that fell through the cracks may take very fresh eyes.
Letting it sit is sound advice (and a very common practice), but a big part of distance is getting your mind to move on (read a few books, or start a new project).
If you're itching to dig in and don't think you'll be able to keep yourself from chewing on it, I wonder if it might help to frame it as a learning exercise:

mark a few chapters (or the whole thing, if you must) without making any of the changes
set it aside and find something to keep your mind busy
return to a fresh copy and repeat the exercise
compare what you caught and wanted to change each time

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