The hardest part about writing my book was the editing and proofreading. There's no getting around that part of the process. You can't automate it, you can't do it in ten easy steps, and you'll feel like the job is never done.
Fortunately I had a few people help me with the proofreading– particularly my sister-in-law who read the book three times. She's not a professional proofreader, but she has the necessary patience and attention to detail to see mistakes that I overlook.
I could have also used a book editor, but the rates were too expensive. So I tried my best to make the content of my book very browsable. I tried hard to write the book as a guide, so that each time readers open the book they can get an idea or two for journal writing and apply those ideas in their Day One journal. I worked hard to sharpen the sentences, use lists, and interactive image galleries so that readers don’t have to read the book from cover to cover.
As for editing and proofreading, I chose to print the pages of my manuscript and do the first proofread on paper. I have a hard time proofreading long documents on my Mac or laptop, and sometimes even proofreading on the iPad can be difficult, though I did just that several times. Reading on paper helped a lot. It provided a way to view the content in a slightly different way. The printing, however was a little expensive–about $12, which is more than the cost of a typical ebook. I mostly stopped using pen and paper about five years ago. I don’t even own a printer.
Anyway, I hope in the proofreading process we caught all the errors. With so much content being published these days, it’s easy for prolific writers of books and blog posts to miss small typos and other errors. And thus that’s why I highly recommend getting or hiring at least one dedicated proofreader. It’s very difficult for the writer of a book to proofread, or even adequately edit, his or her own writing. In fact it’s almost impossible.
via https://dayone.me/1qBQzvX
