Learning the benefits of proofreading

I am an impatient person. Things have to happen now; results must be good and come fast; I tend to love or hate in a matter of minutes; I hate waiting and any process that takes time leads me to think I’m hitting a dead-end. Obviously, that reflects in my writing.

I was always the great student who, in exams, would write five pages in half an hour, and immediately hand them in: my work is finished, so just take it! And obviously, those genially expressed essays would have errors.

Later on, as a journalist back home, I did not have to worry so much about that sort of mishaps, because there was always an editor to revise my texts and polish them. Even as a freelancer, when you hand in your work, someone will do the revision. But that was when freelancing was a traditional activity for traditional media.

Nowadays, in the Era of Internet, freelancers are expected to not only write the text, but also revise it themselves. It saves clients time, and the freelancer’s work is not just a completed task: it is a business card. Adjusting to that mentality takes time, especially if you are like me, an impatient person.

It has happened to me not once, nor twice, but more than that. I write an article or another kind of text, and I submit it. Obviously, as the speed of thought does not equal the speed of writing, the result ends up being good in its essence, but bad in terms of writing quality. So I am finally becoming aware of the need to proofread and revise more than once my writing, because if I do not, I will come off as a bad writer.

First thing I do is to ask for help. I have a colleague at one of the websites I write for who has a look at my work, from a language point of view, and from a content point of view. It is hard to come to senses with the fact that you may be failing as a writer, but it is a necessary step to improving. More than that: before I even have it proofread, I just let the text lay on my desk for 24 hours, and then I come back to it and revise it again.

It is not just a matter of being proud of my work: it is mainly a matter of being sure that what I am delivering is right. In good conscience, I cannot submit bad writing. It speaks badly of my skills and my abilities, and it hurts my clients’ credibility when they use my work publicly.

So now, it is proofreading time! It is great to feel I am improving as a writer and learning new things.