Having several decades of accumulated writing experience (it took that long before I realized I should release/share some of my stories, instead of hoarding them all and continually saying, "I'm not quite there yet!"), not to mention having intensively studied the English language during a college career that lasted longer than a good percentage of stable marriages, I generally follow this approach:
- Write the story
- Wait a few days
- Read the story aloud
- Edit (and rewrite, if necessary)
- Wait a few days
- Re-read the story aloud
- Apply cosmetic touch-up (as needed)
- Show the story to a trusted reader
- Repeat
By "trusted reader," I mean one of a few in my circle whose literary credentials are above reproach. Will the occasional spelling error or errant bit of punctuation still slip through? Yes... but I am essentially using the same method one would use to separate wheat from chaff: beat the wheat, to loosen the chaff, so you can shake the wheat and blow away the chaff. By the time your wheat makes it to market, there should be very little (if any) chaff visible.
There are, of course, occasional exceptions to the routine. When I was preparing "We Don't Plummet Out of the Sky Anymore" for the eBook Signing Event, I experimented with a number of possible formatting options, and I added a few bits to the ancillary text. In the editing process, the text lost one tiny bit of punctuation; in the added text, I forgot to apply "smart" quotes to one word; and an eagle-eyed reader pointed out one missing letter and one backwards apostrophe, that had survived all edits and the subsequent proofreading. If I had been able to take an extra few days, and re-read the entire project once more, I might have caught any one of those glitches... or I might not.
There are no guarantees, even with a professional editor. We have all found typographical errors within mass-market works, and it is relatively rare to find a work that is completely devoid of the same. The goal is to
minimize such errors, so that your reader will overlook (or at least, not think you incompetent for including!) the occasional misstep.
- M.