One of the surest ways to look unprofessional and miss out on writing opportunities is to forget to proofread your work. You can be the most prolific writer in the world, but if you send out work that is filled with typos, misspellings and grammatical errors nobody will ever get the chance to realize it. The reason for this is because they will probably dump it in the circular file, (the trash can), before they even get to the second page.
The goal of writing is to get people to read your work. But let’s face it, nobody has the time or energy to try and keep up with what you meant to say, they want to read a piece that flows and is cohesive. If you have a bunch of errors in your piece it will jar the reader and cause them to lose track of the point you are trying to make. This is also true for work that isn’t unified or is unorganized.
When you are starting off an article or book, you are surrounded by pages and pages of notes and references, so in many cases writers just start writing everything down to allow their story to begin to take shape. But, that should be your first draft, not your final one. In order to ensure that your writing flows properly and goes from one point to the next in a consistent manner, you must reread and rewrite your work several times. The main points you want to get across will still be there, they will just be there in a more understandable way. After reading your piece through 100 times, you may begin to get blurry eyed and lose track of what you where trying to say yourself. If this happens get other people to help you out.
Sometimes we are too close to our own work, and we can’t see the forest through the trees. This is when it may be a good idea to get your friends, co-workers and family to read it through for you. After all, they are part of your audience so getting feed back from them can be invaluable. They can give you new insight into what works and what doesn’t, and having a fresh pair of eyes look at it may help you catch some grammatical errors you have thus far missed.
Don’t let your amazing work go unseen because of some simple typos or other easily fixable errors. It is not only you who will suffer by losing work; we will all suffer for having missed out on a different voice that needs to be heard. A voice that may bring us the next Grapes of Wrath, or who may be the person that uncovers a hidden truth the world needs to know. If you are unsure of your own grammatical skills or you feel as if you are too close to the work to critique it yourself, than find somebody else who can. We will all be better off for it.
