Dear writers, you cannot skip on self-editing your work. This is how I do it!

Self-editing is important!

No matter what you write, you'll have to edit it yourself at least once. Period.

This newsletter is also edited. Not once. Not twice. But four times.

Editing your work yourself is important because it

• Helps refine the idea
• Reduce redundancy
• Make the copy crisp
• Remove typos!

As a reader, errors may interrupt the flow of reading. Like my teacher John Estes? says, "It may disturb the imagination of your reader."

But when writing a short newsletter like this one, I can review it even for 100 times in a day or two. How about a book of more than 20,000 words? Well, if it is required, you MUST do it.

For his novel "A Farewell to Arms," Ernest Hemingway is known to have written 47 endings in his quest for the perfect conclusion.

This is how I did it for my book.

I have edited and rewritten my book 'The Vixen' many times over the course of five years.

Round 1: Self-editing

Once I complete a draft, I move away from the piece until I'm out of the 'writing focus'. Both physically and mentally. This takes approximately an hour. When I return I check the following, in the same order as below:

1. Flow and readability of the content
2. Grammatical errors or Typos
3. Check if I can make it better

In his book "On Writing," Stephen King discusses his process, which typically includes writing a first draft without stopping to make corrections and then revising it heavily in the second draft, often increasing the draft's length by up to 10%.

Round 2: Tools. Tools. Tools.

I use tools like Grammarly or QuillBot to check my content.

Never click ACCEPT ALL changes!

Because some words might be misinterpreted by the algorithm. For example, for one of my client, they had the word 'Veg' in their product. However, the software suggested making it 'Vegetarian' which is unacceptable by the client. If I had clicked ACCEPT ALL, I would probably not notice this.

With the advent of ChatGPT , I additionally used use a GPT called Creative Writing Coach or Inflection AI 's Pi as well for specific feedback. This includes

1. Opinion on structure and flow
2. Grammatical errors to be pointed out
3. Areas of improvement

Most of the time, these feedback helped in improving my work.

I also check my Flesch Reading Ease Score to ensure that my work is reader-friendly and is not too complicated.

Round 3: Revise again

This is a crucial process. Even after the tools review, there might be errors. Once I had written an article in which I had typed as 'image' instead of 'imagine'. It wasn't spotted by any of my tools. But while I was reading my work aloud for the fourth time, I read it as 'image'. All the previous times, I had it as 'imagine' in my head and read the same without realising the mistake on the screen.

Keep repeating this process until you are satisfied.

If it is a book, then you will need an editor as well. The reasons for that will be discussed in the next newsletter.

Fun fact: The Flesch reading ease score for this newsletter is 70.4 with a level of Grade 7!