Is Your Writing Making you Look More Stupid Than You Are?

Editing

Writing ten thousand words a day is something which we really want to do. I go to sleep at night stressed if I don’t work hard enough. 5k is the benchmark for a good day. 10k is an awesome day which I’ll do when I’m inspired.

I’ll talk in another topic about getting those figures to be a daily occurrence. But today I want to talk about editing.

My first ever fiction book was great. It was a story I’d worked on in my head for ages.

One problem – the editing was terrible.

This blog has daily posts. I write loads of information to the point where every time I get a comment or have an idea about my approach, I put down a 500 to 1000 word article about it.

BUT

As MVP blog commenter Sam points out, there are spelling and grammar errors everywhere.

I’ve spent two years trying to get my typing speed up to an incredible level. It comes at the expense of accuracy though.

Also, writing is fun. Editing, not at all.

My Approach To Editing

There are three types of editing. Directional editing. Substantive editing. Copy editing.

I’m only talking about the latter here.

Proofreading and copy editing are something I haven’t done in the past because I don’t find them interesting. It’s a lazy habit that costs me more time than it should.

Here is what I’m doing to help myself:

Typeracer is a game site. It gets your typing speed up, but more importantly, it gets your typing accuracy up. I’m spending ten to twenty minutes a day doing that because it’s the first thing I found.

Word’s spell check.

I haven’t even used spellcheck until recently. Another terrible habit. But you need to. It’d catch most of my errors. Especially when you consider the next step.

Edit your spell check.

There are things that won’t be picked up. Like if you hold the shift key down too long, you’ll get words such as LEt where you’ve capitalised both. This won’t show up because technically it’s a word.

There’ll also be things that you do in your writing that are idiomatic mistakes. Plug those into your autocorrect.

Autocorrect saves time. Use that too. Autocorrect is the nifty little feature where Word assumes you meant one word where you misspelled another.

Finally use the Hemingway editor (or build your own if you can program in anyway.)

Run-on sentences are the bane of my writing; it’s a by-product of coming into writing from academia.

The Hemingway editor is a useful browser tool that highlights things like adverbs and unnecessary verbs, as well as the complexity of sentences. It even gives you a reading grade level, which is handy.

Closing Thoughts

This is quite a short article, because I’m not the expert I should be on this.

Essentially, in order to proofread, you need to follow a few simple steps:

1. Work on your typing accuracy in the first place.
2. Set up Word’s spell check so it does what you want it to.
3. Run everything you write through your new and improved spell check.
4. Use the Hemingway Editor to rid yourself of complex sentences.

Those four steps are going to rid you of 99% of your spelling errors. You should proofread your work as well, but if you can do a simple, automated process like the above, you’re going to clean up your writing quickly and efficiently, and then you’ll be judged on your words as opposed to the cosmetics that are letting you down.

P.S. If my editing is still terrible after following this process, let me know. Abuse me in the comments or social media or whatnot.