I wrote earlier this month that I revised my book using the generous and helpful feedback of two critical friends. The files all went off to the series editor and he has finally started working through them. I have officially moved a step forward into proofreading, copyediting and finalising the files so that they can go to the publisher. Yay! and meh, all at the same time. I am having to dig pretty deep to really engage with all of the very detailed and minute edits that are needed because I am tired now and I really, really want this book to be finished, published and in my hands.

Proofreading, editing and correcting our work before final submission is part of all writing that we do, but it is not a part of the process often focused on as being important and worth doing carefully and precisely. It seems to be assumed that all writers will know that this is important and will know how to manage this part of the process on their own. As a lecturer and journal editor I have read many un-proofread or poorly proofread papers and assignments over the years. As a reader this is a frustrating process—I spend more time focused on the mistakes than I do thinking about the writer’s ideas. I have thus started talking to students in all my writing and research courses about the value of making and taking time to go over their writing carefully to catch and correct all sorts of errors that, overall, diminish the readers’ impression of both the writing and the writer.

I am currently working through my book with feedback from the series editor. A few issues require some actual revision and bits of new writing, but most of it is editing and corrections: Harvard to APA; deleting commas where there shouldn’t be commas; hyphens to em dashes—that kind of thing. But, and this has been the super-tricky part for me, most of the corrections need to be made through reading the entire text again very carefully. I can’t just ‘Find and Replace’ my way through this stage. For things like change ‘s’ spellings to ‘z’ spellings and contractions to not-contractions I have used the magical ‘Find and Replace’ function and saved myself oodles of time and stress. But commas have to do with meaning, and meaning has to be carefully considered. So, I am reading all 78,000-odd words again.

This has been tough. I have a very short attention span these days, for one thing. I have also read this whole book about five times now in writing and revising and rewriting it. The more I read it over and over, the more I doubt my ideas and arguments and start to wonder if what I have written even makes any sense or is worth anything to my potential readers. I don’t read it and think: Wow, this is awesome! I read it and think: Is this even good? This stage is not mentally taxing because most of the corrections are minor. This stage is emotionally taxing because it requires me to be critical of my writing, to find the faults and errors and correct them. That is not easy for any writer to do, especially when they just want the writing to be over with.

But, and I cannot stress this enough, proofreading and editing your work before you make a formal submission, whether to a lecturer, a supervisor or an editor, is crucial. If you hand in a formal piece of writing with three different referencing styles, typos and spelling mistakes, odd paragraph breaks, unhelpful repetition of ideas, inconsistent formatting of headings and spaces, strange punctuation that interferes with coherence and meaning, etc. consider the impression on the reader. What might you think if you were a journal or book editor or a lecturer/supervisor and you had to wade through a piece of writing full of relatively easy-to-fix errors? I am not talking here about larger issues like argument and evidence, which peer reviewers and supervisors are there to help you think about and develop through revisions. I am talking about having the same font throughout a single piece of writing; having the same referencing format accurately applied; having correct spellings and no typos; having consistently formatted headings (which also connect to meaning and structure in a text), having pauses and stops where they make sense in sentences and paragraphs.

In re-reading my book chapters to catch all of my own errors and update the formatting to the publisher’s/editor’s preferred format, I have been able to find a correct other issues not necessarily commented on, such as overly long sentences that need to be shortened or broken up; typos that I (and the spell-check) missed; and confusing sentences that do not make clear sense. It has been a frustrating, time-consuming, and hugely illuminating process. It is making me a better, sharper writer, for sure. I am learning that there is always more to learn about how to write for different audiences and different purposes. Writing really is a process without an end.

That can feel flattening—when will I be a ‘good’ writer? The thing is, making mistakes doesn’t mean you are not a ‘good’ writer; getting a lot of critical feedback doesn’t mean you are not a ‘good’ writer either. Although all of this editing and proofreading has been tough, I know that the series editor has offered all of it with the intention of making my book as sharp, focused and readable as I can make it. He wants it—and me—to succeed, so that feedback and critique comes from a place of care rather than negativity.

That can be a useful starting place for the painful process of proofing and editing your work: care. You care about your ideas, your writing, the time it takes you to craft papers and chapters. That care doesn’t only come through in the ideas themselves but also in the way in which you present and share those ideas. Rather than only considering the writer’s point of view (what you think about your writing), focus on your reader: what impression do you want the reader to have of your writing?

Being ‘readerly’ when we write means considering how a reader may experience our writing and thinking carefully about who our target readers are and what we want to communicate to them. Proofreading a text carefully is part of being readerly. It communicates care about your work and attention to detail. Writing is a craft, regardless of what you are writing about. As writers, we want the focus to be on our ideas, not on our typos, spelling mistakes and sloppy referencing. If we make and take time to offer ourselves as writers the opportunity to ‘polish’ the writing we have poured so much time and effort into, the ideas are what our readers can spend their time engaging with.

When I have felt like just giving up or shortcutting this process with ‘Find and Replace’, I have reminded myself of the series editor’s words: It takes time and effort to do something properly. But do it properly now or regret the errors at your leisure‘. After all of this time and work, there is no way I am going to out myself in the position of regretting this book or avoiding it for fear of finding mistakes I could have fixed had I just stayed this course a little longer. I owe myself and my readers my very best work. I think we all do.