Have you ever felt like the world doesn’t care about your writing — specifically, the world around you: friends, family, social media contacts?

You could be a poet just starting out or a published novelist, but those closest don’t seem to get what you’re doing or why you’re doing it; they imagine you want to be famous, or that it’s just a hobby, like keeping a diary. In other words, it’s not all that serious.

In truth, it can sometimes feel like you're trying to make yourself understood through a thick pane of glass — for years, the suggestion given to me was that I go into journalism, which never interested me but is an understandable idea given I come from a background where that would likely be the only “proper” writing career to come to mind.

If any of this sounds familiar, then don’t worry; you’re not alone. In fact, it’s pretty standard for creatives in any discipline, whatever their background or class status. In my case, only one family member has read all three of my books and told me what they thought. There have been various instances where friends or extended family members have told me that they’ve bought one of my books and they’re looking forward to reading it… Only to never mention it again.

The most embarrassing moment, however, came when my old band, FABRIK, released our second album in 2020. We’d spent three years recording it, and put a lot of time, effort (and money) into making it as strong as possible. I was hugely proud of it (and still am), and of course, I posted about its release on my Facebook and Instagram.

Around the same time, I posted a picture of some potatoes that I’d managed to grow in my first attempt at a veg patch.

Guess which post got more likes.

The album sunk without trace (not helped by all live promo being cancelled by the pandemic), and FABRIK ended. I couldn’t consider making music for at least a year afterwards because I was so bitter about it — and some potatoes getting more attention than my heartfelt creative endeavours felt like the universe spitting in my face.

Even before that happened, however, I’d spent years fretting about and getting frustrated by similar things, assuming they meant that my writing — or any of my creative work — wasn’t good enough, and that, by extension, I wasn’t good enough either. And I know I’m not the only one. I remember a musician friend once venting on Facebook about how more “friends” liked posts about his then-new EP than actually went and listened to it, and I’m sure you have at least one equivalent story.

But a few months ago, I stumbled on a quote from Garbage singer Shirley Manson (which, for the life of me, I cannot find again, despite half an hour of Googling). In it, she said something to the effect that anyone who was going to dedicate themselves to something creative had to persevere with it, even though friends and family were never going to be into it. This from the frontwoman of a multimillion-selling rock band! The implication was that, despite all that she had achieved, some of those closest to her still didn’t understand it all.

What she said chimed with my own, much lower-level experiences and helped me to finally realise something crucial that I believe any creative should bear in mind: Your network is not your audience.

But crucially, that doesn’t make your work worthless; it just means that the people you have on social media — people you work with, went to school or uni with, randomly met on a night out, or even share DNA with aren’t automatically the right audience for your writing.

This leads us to the positive side. If you’re a creative with something to say, and you can say it to a certain level of technical competence, then there is an audience out there for you. Almost all of my most enthusiastic (and most honest) reviews have come from people I’ve never met — and probably never will meet. And I have to say that that is at least as satisfying than a member of my immediate family liking what I do. There’s nothing at play beyond someone enjoying my work for what it is — there can be no question of not wanting to hurt my feelings.

The most difficult part, of course, is finding that audience, and this is where you need the help of outsiders: agents, publishers, bloggers, poetry night organisers, writer groups, writer development programmes like the one I’m fortunate enough to be on… The list is long and consists of people you may not have met yet but who can help you get your work in front of people who will understand it.

The search for an audience is a serious, often lonely graft, and however selective you are with approaching agents, etc. It can often feel like door-to-door leafleting — shoving your work through the doors of possibly hostile strangers, often to no response — but don’t let the ambivalence of those closest to you dishearten you. There are people out there who will appreciate and even love your work, even if you have no idea who they are.

Have you written something you want to get out into the world? Do you feel like it could do with a fresh pairs of eyes to check it over first? If so, then get in touch; I’d love to help.

When I self-published my first-ever book, Pop Art Poems: The Music of The Jam, back in summer 2016, I was not yet a professional writer, proofreader, and editor. I didn’t see this as a problem and decided to go it alone, doing pretty much everything except physically printing the books.

As a result, I made mistakes. On the one hand, that’s okay because if you never make a mistake, you never learn anything — and I did eventually sell the 1,000 copies I ordered, making a profit and getting some good reviews despite minimum marketing.

On the other hand, it meant that the book I’d spent four years working on wasn’t as good as it could have been. There were some glaring errors, and it took a lot of work to correct them for the second edition, which I self-published through
Amazon’s KDP platform five years later.

My biggest mistake by far in self-publishing was not employing a proofreader who understood grammar more than I did at the time (I worked full-time in the pub trade back then, more used to changing barrels than correcting comma splices). As a result, I spent a lot of money on 1,000 books that contained multiple typos and formatting errors. I remember reading it through for the first time and each fresh mistake feeling like a gut punch. There was no way I could alter any of it, either; I had to go out and sell something I knew was flawed. I’d worked on this book for four years and fallen at the final, pretty low hurdle.

At the very least, I wish I’d hired a professional to act as a fresh pair of eyes.

So why didn’t I use a proofreader? Looking back, I think there were three main reasons:

1. Pride

I knew I was a good writer — I had a first-class degree, after all — what could a proofreader have taught me about writing?

This is clearly not a healthy approach. Even if you’re self-publishing, it still takes a village to make your book as brilliant as possible, and a sensitive proofreader or editor can help you achieve that by noticing typos or suggesting subtle changes you might have missed because you’ve gone through your manuscript so many times that you’re no longer seeing it objectively.

2. Money

My manuscript was roughly 100,000 words and would have cost a few hundred quid to proofread. Looking back, given how much I was prepared to spend on printing and getting permission to use the picture I wanted for the front cover, adding, say, £500 to the initial outlay should have been a no-brainer, but I picked this crucial area to cut corners on.
As I had a degree and was good at spelling, I figured that a thorough check with Word’s spellcheck tool would sieve out any mistakes. It didn’t, and that’s the main reason I can’t look at first editions of the first book I ever wrote.

3. Panic

For reasons I’ll save for another blog, I rushed the self-publishing process, going from finishing the second draft to having physical copies in my spare room in a matter of weeks. On reflection, this was unnecessary. At the time, I had no concept of proofreading turnaround times (today, I could proofread a book of a similar length with a similar amount of errors in around 10 days), and to delay publication by any length of time would, I felt, have ruined years of research and writing.

As it happened, the opposite was true: the rushing ruined it.

So, in conclusion, I encourage — no, I implore you to employ a proofreader for your book, blog, website, course, or script. Yes, I do so because I’m a professional proofreader, but I also write as a fellow author who ultimately let his work down by not giving it that final polish.

Got something that you think would benefit from a proofread? Get in touch with me at [email protected]. I can’t wait to hear about your project!

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere at the moment. And whether we like it or not, it’s going to stay everywhere.
I admit I’m a relative latecomer to it and was vaguely worried that it was going to steal my livelihood — who’s going to pay me to write something for them when ChatGPT can do it for free at the click of a button?

But then I had the good fortune of being asked to edit Andrew Reid’s excellent book, The ChatGPT Guide for Business, and its non-sensational, step-by-step approach helped me to realise that AI could help my work, rather than hinder it.

However, as there are currently a lot of worrying headlines about what AI might be capable of (from taking jobs to destroying humanity), I thought it wise to write this brief explainer so you know that when you employ me, you’re working with me and my skills; you’re not paying me to get a computer to do it all.

So yes, I have decided to adopt AI, specifically ChatGPT, into my work. However, I emphatically do not use it to generate content that I am being paid to write. Nor have I used it to generate any content for this website beyond two random paragraphs for me to demonstrate what editing and proofreading are and a suggestion for a section title. I have then thought about and amended everything I have asked it to generate.

When I do use ChatGPT for a project, I essentially employ it as a kind of mega-Google, asking it questions about, say, US/UK grammar conventions or whether a certain term is hyphenated or capitalised in a specific context. I may also use it as part of my SEO research or ask it for guidance on something like writing a meta tag. For these kinds of tasks, I think AI makes my work stronger and more accurate.

​I must stress, however, that I do not use ChatGPT as a wholesale spelling-and-grammar-checking tool (its grammar isn’t perfect, I have to say!), and under no circumstances would I ever paste any portion of my clients’ work into it. When you work with me, anything you have written or you want me to write with you is treated sensitively and confidentially unless specified otherwise.

The difference between proofreading and editing is essentially the amount of work required and the amount of involvement I, as your proofreader or editor, am allowed with your words.

To best demonstrate what I mean, I asked ChatGPT to generate two random 100-word paragraphs that required proofreading and editing (I then further added mistakes for me to correct). I then corrected them both to the required level, hopefully giving you a clear picture of what to expect when you employ me as a proofreader or an editor.

First off, here is a 100-word paragraph from a tech book or manual, which requires proofreading rather than editing. See if you can spot the mistakes:

To properly assemble the device, please follows these steps carefully. First, insert the battery into it's designated compartment, ensuring the polarity is correctly aligned. Next, attach the cover securely by fastening the screws tightly. Then, connect the power cord to the device and plug it in a nearby wall socket. After that, turn on the switch and wait for the indicator light to turns green. Once the device is activated, make sure to not touch any of it's internal components, as it may cause damage. Finally, refer to the user's manual for further informations on operation and maintenance.

…And here is my proofread version. See if you can spot the changes:

To properly assemble the device, please follows these steps carefully. First, insert the battery into its designated compartment, ensuring the polarity is correctly aligned. Next, attach the cover securely by fastening the screws tightly. Connect the power cord to the device and plug it into a nearby wall socket. After that, turn on the switch and wait for the indicator light to turn green. Once the device is activated, make sure to not touch any of its internal components, as it may cause damage. Finally, refer to the user's manual for further information on operation and maintenance.

This example only required proofreading because the content was correct, well-ordered, and had almost correct spelling and grammar. It has likely been gone through several times, possibly by another editor. I did, however, have to make the following changes:

• Changing “plug it in a nearby…” to “plug it into a nearby…” so that it reads more professionally.
• Changing “it’s” (always short for “it is”) for its where necessary.
• Correcting the spelling of “turns” and “informations” (turns isn’t misspelt, but is wrong in the context used; the plural of “information” is “information”).

​I haven’t made any major changes, and were this a real book, I might go another page before finding another correction, but if I hadn’t made the changes I did, this paragraph would be far less professional, blighting the book. (And believe me, I’ve learned from experience what happens when you publish something without getting a third party to proofread!)

Now let’s look at editing, which requires more work and allows me, as your editor, more scope to sculpt your words.
​
For this example, I asked ChatGPT to generate a 100-word paragraph from the introduction to a non-fiction book about a random subject (it chose the human mind, which may or may not be a bit spooky). I asked it to include examples of common things that editors pick up on and alter:

In this book, we embark on an exploratory journey into the intriguing realm of mind, and consciousness. Preare to delve into the deep perplexing depths of the human psyche as we unravel it’s brilliant, mysterious labyrinth. From the intricate neural networks deep within our brains to the enigmatic nature of dreams, we'll navigate through the vast ocean of cognitive processes. Discover the dizzying, complex kaleidoscope of thoughts, emotions and perceptions which shape our colorful understandings. Through the complex prism of scientific research and philosophical ponderings, this book aims to illuminate the wonderous tapestry of our inner worlds, shedding light on the unexplored frontiers of human cognition and consienceness. So, embark on this thought provoking odyssey and let your minds horizons expand like a burst of crazy, awe-inspiring vibrant fireworks in the twilight November skies!

And here's how I edited it:

In this book, we embark on an exploratory journey into the intriguing realm of mind and consciousness. Prepare to delve into the depths of the human psyche as we unravel its mysterious labyrinth. From the intricate neural networks of our brains to the enigmatic nature of dreams, we'll navigate the vast ocean of cognitive processes. Discover the kaleidoscope of thoughts, emotions, and perceptions that shape our understanding. Through scientific research and philosophical ponderings, this book aims to illuminate the tapestry of our inner worlds, shedding light on the unexplored frontiers of human consciousness. So, embark on this thought-provoking odyssey and let your mind’s horizons expand!

As you can see, I’ve made some small changes and some larger ones. I have:

• Corrected the obvious and more subtle spelling mistakes.
• Deleted commas that were in the wrong place and added ones that were missing.
• Removed unnecessary words that say the same thing twice (“i.e. the deep depths”) or are overused (“complex” appears three times in the unedited example, only once in the edited one).
• Tidied the grammar up (“its” instead of “it’s”, “mind’s horizon” instead of “minds horizon”, “that” instead of “which”, hyphenating words where needed, etc.).
• Cut down on adjectives (in the unedited paragraph, the author is clearly passionate about their subject — which I want to preserve — but they are trying to convey their passion with lots of lively describing words, and these are obscuring the message).
• Removed the final simile because it’s what is known in the trade as “purple prose” (over-the-top writing, which, like overusing adjectives, can make writing appear less professional and harder to read).

This example conveys how editing is more active than proofreading in suggesting where writing could be tightened or improved — without losing the essence of your unique voice. When you work with me on your project, all changes are “tracked” in Microsoft Word, meaning you can review them and accept or disregard as you see fit.