Tricks to Editing Your Own Work
When your brain makes you blind to your errors.
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I naturally think in concepts. I take in the meanings, the ideas, the principles, recognize the patterns, and see the bigger possibilities.
It is why I have a knack for worldbuilding and series creation. Conceptual thinking lends itself to the long term and the future, seeing past the here and now.
The kicker is, details matter when it comes to editing and implementing your ideas. In taking note of the details, you lay a solid foundation for clarity in writing.
Seeing the details is also what makes a great editor. It is a skill you can learn, but if you are a concept thinker like me, the journey is bumpier.
Listen to your words.
The brain is complicated in the way it works. Some of my biggest struggles come from not catching a word that I left out of a sentence. Why?
The brain knows what should be there and sees it, despite the fact it is not correct. That has to do with the way the left and right sides of the brain take in information.
One way to combat the problem is to listen to your work spoken out loud. Do this after you are done writing and have put your piece through editing software such as Grammarly or ProWritingAid.
You can read aloud to yourself, or have Word read it back to you, or use a free online text to speech reader. You can even have a friend read it to you. By listening to my work, I catch words I have left out, awkward sentences, meandering tenses, and such.
Read backward.
I also tend to use the wrong spelling of similar-sounding words, homonyms, or words that sound alike but have different meanings, homophones. Then you have homographs, which are words that are spelled the same but have different meanings.
Examples:
Homonyms: mail-male, ball-bawl
Homophones: be-bee, by, bye, buy
Homographys: Lead meaning metal, Lead meaning to guide | bat as in baseball bat and bat as an animal
One thing that might help with catching these is reading backward; by that, I mean…
