A common piece of advice for writers, both new and experienced, is to put what you think is the final draft of your manuscript aside for a period of time and read it with fresh eyes.

I’ve done this many times with various projects and found not only sneaky typos, but quite often opportunities to phrase something a little better or clarify a sentence. Sometimes I’ve even completely rephrased a passage with improved wording.

Recently, a publisher picked up one of my non-fiction works and I thought to give it a proof read before sending the manuscript to their staff editor. I’m so glad I did!

To put things in perspective, this project was originally published by a small niche publisher as a set of five books published between 1998 – 2001. During the time I was writing further books for them, several readers suggested I combine the five books into one volume.

When the main person behind the publishing company died and the publishing house slowly collapsed, I made the effort to re-write the material and created a single volume, released in 2013 under a fresh title. This allowed me to skirt around any possible contractual disputes until the publishing company went completely out of business.

By then I had a reputation in the community surrounding my subject matter and opted for self-publishing rather than seeking out a new publisher. Much of the material had to be re-typed, rephrased and otherwise made fresh. A couple of years after it was released, a hard drive crash lost the original manuscript for this single volume and I had an intent to re-create it from older copies of the original chapters for a long time. Most of these pre-dated the edits and proof reads for the project.

Once I had made the decision to go ahead with the new publisher, I copied the chapters into a manuscript file, but wanted to proof read what I was about to send them.

It wasn’t just a matter of typos. Those had probably been picked up on the edits before. I found incidences of the wrong word, especially two letter words like is, in, if and on that might or might not have been corrected before.

More importantly, I also found a few phrases that needed clarification or updating and one paragraph with three incidences of the same word! Had these been spotted on edit before? I really don’t know.

The point is, when we are close to a project, many things might get missed. With a decade between my release of this volume and the current proof read, I was sufficiently detached to see what needed fixing or might be phrased better after ten years of more writing experience.

This brought to mind my other books, both fiction and non-fiction. What would I find if I were to re-read books I wrote between 2005 – 2012? I cite these years because most of the books I wrote during that time frame have had audio versions released since and in the process of proofing the narration for them, I found those hidden typos and possible improvements, though not nearly as many as the current reconstructed project!

When is the last time you read the books you wrote years ago? In the days when all publishing was done through commercial publishers, new editions were sometimes released when an author made improvements in the text. These days, even big names like Stephen King occasionally release an ‘Author’s preferred edition’ of a popular book, returning cut material the publishers insisted taking out years before to keep printing costs down.

Indie authors are perfectly justified in doing this too! Have you ever considered reading your old books and releasing an updated version? With fresh eyes and added writing experience, many books can be improved and released in a new edition. It takes time, but could give an old story new life!

Jaq D Hawkins

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