Editing without the red pen

When you send in a book manuscript to an agent, one of the most common things I'm reading is that you must send in your most polished piece of work. So before I started the grueling task of agent hunting, I pulled out the ol' book and began another nice long edit. Let me first say this: I am not an editor. So I edit to the best of my ability in hopes that I'm catching all of the little flaws and cleaning up where cleaning needs to be. After thirteen denials (and potentially more as they don't always respond with a rejection), I've decided that I might as well take all my best efforts and rethink them. It's a win-win situation because I have been meaning to dust off the printed copy and re-read it in preparation for writing the sequels. Why write a sequel if you're not published you ask? Simple. The story is in my head and it's begging to be immortalized in ink. Is immortalized too strong a word? Perhaps. So as I'm reading through it, I am hoping to gear up for some good bonding time with my characters. Oh, and the couch has been missing my butt planted on it for several hours a night as I tick away at the keyboard to the wee hours in the morning. Though I am 'editing' while I read, it's more of a mental edit. I really haven't busted out the red pen. Hey. I only have one printed copy. I'd like to hold onto that until I can print another one. And red ink all over it doesn't give me the happy joy-joy feeling that I like. Weird. I know. I have taken a pencil and lightly crossed out the typos, but so far I haven't found any places that I would make severe changes to. This is the third...maybe fourth edit. Perhaps when I get my first partial/full manuscript request, I can say that I have polished it until shiny and bright. I'm (not so) patiently waiting for that day.