<<I’ve heard of writers saying they are afraid to submit something as it never seems good enough to submit. I know we have to get over perfection paralysis to submit. But even if I proofread something two to three times and submit it, it seems that if I look again, it’s like, ‘Oh, I missed that.’ Given you submit weekly newsletters, how do you proofread so as to be the best possible? ~Thanks, Roy>>

Most of us, whether we admit it or not, believe we can proof our own work and get by. Who better to spot the mistakes than the person most familiar?

Frankly, the reality is quite the opposite. This quote from a piece in Wired Magazine says it well:

“We . . . take in sensory information and combine it with what we expect, and we extract meaning. When we’re reading other peoples’ work, this helps us arrive at meaning faster by using less brain power. When we’re proofreading our own work, we know the meaning we want to convey. Because we expect that meaning to be there, it’s easier for us to miss when parts (or all) of it are absent. The reason we don’t see our own typos is because what we see on the screen is competing with the version that exists in our heads.“

Reread that last sentence in bold.

If you are intent on editing your own work, then put time between the writing and the editing. Days or weeks, if not a month or two. If you do not have the liberty of that much time, then find a different set of eyes. What is important is that you find a set of eyes that understands the type of writing you are doing. A romance writers may not be able to proof your feature for a magazine. A journalist might not have an eye for poetry. And your mother, unless she is a professional writer, ought to be little more than a courtesy.

I’ve been asked how I proof my work in FundsforWriters. I write much of a newsletter well ahead of time, usually, because I understand the fresher the writing in my head, the less likely I will see the mistakes. And trust me, readers of the newsletter are eager to let me know my mistakes. But I also contract with a proofreader each week, someone familiar with FFW and its mission. If I do not have her, then I read my work aloud to someone who’s never heard it. Not only does that fresh ear catch mistakes, but reading aloud catches things reading silently cannot. Your tongue does not often allow the errors.

The best writers in the world have strong editors. Trust me; your own eyes are not your friend.