Why can’t you successfully proofread your own work?
It’s very simple – you read what you expect to see.
When you read other people’s work it’s fresh and new. Any errors seem to leap from the page, as the following examples demonstrate:
“Perdita was so angry she felt like throwing the laptop out of the the attic window.”
“Mark was fifty-five minutes younger that Spencer. An injustice than irritated him no end.”
The errors in the above sentences look so obvious. However, when you’ve been working on your book for months, maybe longer, and you’ve re-worked, revised, edited, tweaked, fallen in and out of love with it more times than you can remember, it’s almost impossible to gain the professional distance that is required to proofread it effectively. This is no reflection on your skills as a writer.
I’d like to share my own (humbling) experience. You see, I’d been telling people for years that it was unwise to proofread their own work, but to be honest I didn’t believe it would be true for me. I’d been proofreading for over a decade, I knew what to look for. So when I co-wrote an erotic romance with a friend a few years ago (that’s another humbling story) and we sent the book to our proofreader, I was confident that she wouldn’t find anything to correct.
Let’s pause, while you chuckle, because you know what’s coming.
When the proof copy was returned to us, I was MORTIFIED.
Yes, it deserves capital letters.
Characters who were as dear to me as my own family had their names spelled inconsistently, missing quote marks made a nonsense of dialogue, and there were typos galore.
Nothing like first-hand experience to teach you (ie me) a lesson!
And now, to make me feel a bit better and to entertain you, I’d like to share a few of my favourite bloopers of recent years (I’ve used artistic licence to ensure that no author can be identified):
“Maddy checked that her trouser suit was free of creases before she walked into the interview room. She shook hands with the CEO and felt the waist band of her skirt tighten alarmingly as she took the seat he offered.”
“A warrior through and through, Mardor fought on, the blood dripping from his severed arm. Around him, his soldiers spilled their blood for the victory that was destined to be theirs. Mardor gripped his sword with both hands and brought it down…”
“Maria shook the last painkiller from the bottle and swallowed the table with a gulp of water.”
“Discretion is the better part of velour.”
“This was the last pubic lecture he’d ever give. His nerves were too bad to ever consider doing anything so embarrassing ever again.”
I hope you enjoyed those bloopers as much as I did.
I’d like to add a practical coda to this post:
If you want to self-publish, but you can’t afford a proofreader I encourage you either to save up or to consider some old-fashioned bartering. For example, swapping proofreads with another author, or offering your website design skills to a proofreader. Or you could try a micro-version of the approach used by an innovative publisher called Booktrope, where you offer a proofreader a share of the income from your book.
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Lit World Interviews 
Great advice for all authors, with self-publishing so easy it’s difficult not to want to press “publish” too early.
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Thanks. Yes, I think the urge to get the story “out there” means that many first-time authors rush to publish without ensuring that their book is really ready for public consumption.
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This is so true. I hardly notice other people’s mistakes, let alone my own.
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Reblogged this on Jo Robinson and commented:
“Discretion is the better part of velour” 😀 😀 😀 Excellent article from Wendy Janes on proofreading.
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Thanks for reblogging, Jo. I roared with laughter and then had to email the author to thank him for making my day with “Discretion is the better part of velour.” Such a simple slip, which makes it so wonderful. 🙂
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Reblogged this on Smorgasbord – Variety is the spice of life and commented:
I suffer from word blindness after reading my work and always miss the obvious… I do the same with my blog posts but as soon as I click that publish button – I always find another couple and have to re-edit. Very useful and entertaining 2nd article from Wendy Janes – you can read last week’s post on Lit World Interviews too.
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Thanks for reblogging. Oh, that toe-curling moment when you see your own typo. Honestly, it makes me go hot and cold in panic when it happens to me, and I immediately scurry for the “edit” button. Glad you were entertained. 🙂
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So much better now with Ebooks when you can at least take it down, correct and put back up… in the good old days that first moment you hold your beloved print copy in your hand and turn the pages and find you have spelt the main characters name wrong…….. great article Wendy.
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We’re all too close to our work Wendy. I swear by my beta readers 🙂
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Reblogged this on Have We Had Help? and commented:
Never be scared of handing over your WIP to someone else to read through. 🙂
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Thanks for reblogging my post, Jack. Yes, beta readers are great at picking up errors.
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Reblogged this on cicampbellblog and commented:
No matter how many times you read your own work, you can keep missing simple typos, spelling mistakes, and other errors because the writer reads what he thought he wrote. It’s a trick our brains play on us. That’s why we need help from folks like Wendy Janes.
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Thanks, Christine.
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Been through this twice, and discovered the more the merrier. I have two people to go through it now! This post is so darned true!
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Thanks, Wendy, for another great post.
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Reblogged this on NEVA BROWN & BOOKS.
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So true. It drives me crazy that I become blind to my typos no matter how carefully I read. My proofreaders are lifesavers.
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A humorous look at a great truth. When I was teaching, I tried to impress upon my students that they exchange work or use text-to- speech before handing their work in. It’s true, no matter what your age, you see what you think you wrote.
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Unfortunately, most people do not know how to punctuate, spell, use proper grammar or syntax, and those ARE the proofreaders and editors. Sigh.
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What do you have against, velour, Jo?
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Excellent article. ❤
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Great advice and some fun examples!
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Reblogged this on theowlladyblog.
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Thanks for all the positive comments and the reblogs.
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Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog….. An Author Promotions Enterprise! and commented:
AUTHORS – Great advice from Wendy 😀
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Thanks for reblogging, Chris.
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Very Welcome Wendy 😀
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You are so right, Wendy! After spending weeks working, editing and re-writing one of my works I send it off– with confidence– to my editor, knowing she will find few errors. And then I get it back and blaze in embarrassment. But she makes it so much better!
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Love that phrase “blaze in embarrassment” – that’s exactly the feeling. However, we know that good editors and proofreaders are there to make our work better. That genuine relationship between author and editor is so enriching.
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You are so right Christine … You can bee very thorough when you constantly reread something you almost invariably keep missing the same thing 🙂
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As both an author and a narrator for Audible, may I suggest a novel idea? Consider getting your book narrated right up front and offer to pay your narrator a few extra bucks to send you possible edits. Nobody sees the errors like somebody who’s reading it aloud and recording it. I have caught many, many typos while I’m doing my job, including flow problems and horrendous run-on sentences.
No normal reader is ever as totally immersed in your MS as your narrator is! 🙂
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Hmm, I wonder if there is a narrator around here that needs to be advertising services? Hmm.
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There just might be, Ronovan! 😉
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