Be an Author: Proofreading · 8:31pm Oct 31st, 2018
Authors cannot properly proofread their own writing.*
It is important to fully buy into that concept before delving into the exceptions and solutions. It maps well to the statement, A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. If you're an experienced writer, I should not have to convince you of the truth here. Yes, you can (and should) proof your own writing; you'll catch many of your grammar and spelling mistakes. Many, but not all.
I liken the failure to the creative process of world-building in fiction. It's a construct. You know what is in your world, how it all interrelates. Knowing means memory. In the same way, the sentences you place on the page exist simultaneously in your head. Paradoxically, this means you know what you meant to write even in the face of seeing the contrary in print: auto-correct madness, duplicated words, homonyms, incorrect plurals, misspellings, missing words, punctuation, pronoun antecedent errors, typos, unfortunate word choices—the lot.
You've likely experienced looking for your keys and found them in a place you previously searched, possibly many times. Your context is "the keys are not here" and you can't see them, repeatedly, frustratingly. This is the same mind-influencing-perception fault you experience proofreading your own work.
Of course, you may be a grammatician or a copyeditor, and that's fine. You've mastered the monster. You can stop here.
There are solutions.
1,2Your first step should be taking advantage of the technology literally at your fingertips. While I mean turning on your spellchecker (you have, haven't you?), possibly turning off autocorrect, and enabling a grammar checker if you have one available, I mean something even more powerful. Let your computer, iPad, or phone read to you. Most operating systems have accessibility features for the blind and nearly blind. Discover how. Choose the most natural sounding voice option. Reading and listening use totally different neural circuits. It will short-circuit your brain's memory of what you wrote and let you hear not what you intended to write but what you actually wrote. As a bonus, it'll give you a truer sense of pacing. This is a step I use after cleaning up the manuscript but before giving it to a reader (see below). Reading aloud as an alternative method is very affective, but you must divorce your mind from the text or you may actually read what you intended to write rather than what you did write. It's super for evaluating dialog and pacing, though.
In the long run, it best is to find—and possibly pay—a copyeditor. If you plan to self-publish a book, that's a must. Nothing will ruin your reputation like obvious typos and grammar errors, regardless of the quality of the story.
The next best is to find a reader. Let's be precise here. A reader can be a relative or a good friend, but that's not optimal. The more a reader is attached to an author, the more likely he or she will overlook the flaws that appear in the author's writing. A good reader will not only proofread but critique a story, but I'll cover criticism in a different article. In any case, the twofer is important. But if your reader only strives to find typos and grammar errors, all is good. Most will. Be ready to reciprocate, though!
The next best is to shelf your story, or put it in a drawer. Let time pass. Write something else. (Really, do write something else.) After a week, a month, or six months, take it out prepared to copyedit. It should look alien, like someone else's writing. Copyedit it on the first pass, because that's about all it takes to refresh your memory to get to the point of glossing over stuff because you know what you meant enough to ignore what you see. I've looked at manuscripts, even my own published novel, more than a decade later. I marveled that I'd even written it. The time necessary for this solution is obviously personal; it's good to find the amount needed, though.
The good news is unlike many authors, you write on a fan fiction site. I publish here to practice new techniques (first person narrative) and to get my mojo back, but there are plenty of benefits. Feedback, i.e., readers. Lots of them. All sorts of groups with members with specific interests. Visit the groups. You can post in forums offering to "pre-read" stories for writers who will do the same for you—there's even groups specifically for that. Ask commenters on your stories or persons who've followed your user page. The people frequenting FimFiction are a friendly bunch.
Find someone to proofread your work. It's a level-up professionally.
I'm not saying you shouldn't proof your own writing. No matter how many times you go over the piece, don't be surprised when later you read a red-penciled mess of errors you missed. I've tagged my first story on FimFiction, Lesson Learned. See the sidebar. Though I think it is a great story, I know it has some clunky writing and a few typos. Lesson learned, indeed.
*I proofread this article myself. Any typos you find are solely my fault.
[Update] Two commenters reminded me of powerful strategies I use so often I forgot to mention them. Credit where credit is due!
1 Read the story aloud: Silvadel
2 Use accessibility features to make your device read the story to you: MushroomPone
The key is to read your manuscript aloud. This works far better than just scanning your work.
If I was to publish professionally I'd consider paying someone. I know full well how difficult it can be to edit my own work. It really does help to just let the material sit for a while. I go back, and will often find things that make absolutely no sense to me. Sure I knew what I was talking about when I wrote it, but there in lays the problem. I failed to communicate what I was trying to impart. I can go over something maybe a hundred times, and still find something that needs fixing a month later.
4961249
Don't be hard on yourself. Channeling a character or choreographing a fight scene takes concentration no normal person can do and also control writing it all down perfectly. The shame is that your (or my) brain memoriizes the pattern as right and messes up letting us see the mistakes as not what we'd meant. <sigh>
The best you can do is make a list of your greatest hits errors, then do a search on each. Hmmm. I should add doing that to the article. That's what the list in the article was, btw.
4961249
Yes, yes! I do that all the time. I also have my computer or phone read it to me. It helps immensely! The sound bypasses your synthesized memory during writing and makes the words seem new. I should update the article.
4961391
I seriously find things that are complete gibberish. I'll look at it and ask myself WTF is that? 0.o
4961246
For my own editing passes, I actually use a text-to-speech chrome extension and listen to a robot read my work. It helps TREMENDOUSLY. It's obviously no replacement for the eyes of someone else, but it's a really great way to polish things up a bit before handing something over.
4962239
I let my iPhone read my stories to me. It is especially good for my own writing because I've only seen what I wrote. I've never heard it, so I have no preconceptions of what it is.
4962239
4961246
I updated the article to reflect your excellent comments!