You're A Genius. You Know the Atlas.

So writer (and particularly editor) friends: I have a request that is a cipher wrapped in an enigma, smothered in secret sauce.

I’d like answers to the two following questions:

1. How many times is too many times to edit a novel? Explain your answer.
2. What would a writer do to best spend his/her time during the editing process?

My purpose in asking these questions is twofold:

1. I teach a basic English writing course at BYU-Idaho, where we spend about ¾ of the semester on an “argumentative synthesis” paper, which calls for the students to identify a problem, explain why it’s a significant problem, explore solutions, and then propose the best solution. I want to show them that writing about problems they’re facing in their own life will lead to a better paper than writing about the Big Three topics they always want to write about: Gun control, abortion, and overuse of social media (if they happen to have a personal, rather than general, connection to these topics, that’s fine, but most of them just want to write about a Big Problem, and that leads to boring, boring papers.
2. I’m a hack fantasy novelist on his 17th revision to his first novel and would like to get it out of Limboland and into a form presentable for querying. (I’m trying to show my students that I use the argumentative synthesis process to fix problems in my own life, so they’ll want to do the same.)
Because the paper I’m writing requires evidence of research, I would like permission to use your names, titles, etc., as I write this sample paper to show to my students. I may also publish the results on my personal blog which has an audience of mostly relatives, some students, and Chinese bots.

I may contact you for further edification as I work on this paper. You would be under no obligation, however, to read my novel – in other words, I’m not fishing for hours of free work. Just a little bit of free advice mostly to help my students out. I can reciprocate with any number of consultations in my areas of expertise which include MASH and Simpsons quotes and – believe it or not – a lot of writing experience, just not with novels.

I have a ten-year background in newspaper journalism, followed up by more than a decade’s worth of technical writing, so I’m not averse to correction or criticism.

And since I am prone to offering nonsensical answers to serious queries, I fully expect to see a few of them here. That’s all good. I fully expect things like this too:

Dave: I made a small error in judgment.

Mr. James: A small error in judgment... What exactly would that be, Dave? Would that be Matthew's desk, or the dinner with Matthew, or the dinner with Lisa or the second dinner with Lisa?

Dave: Okay, I may have made three or four small errors in judgment.

Mr. James: No, they weren't errors, Dave. They were decisions and that's your job. No, the only error I see is that you're letting your people push you around and make you second-guess your decisions.

Dave: Of course, you're right.

Mr. James: And now you're letting me do it. Want my advice?

Dave: Yes.

Mr. James: Well, I'm not gonna give it to you.