According to 18th century writer Samuel Richardson, the "inventor" of the modern novel as we know it, "It is much easier to find fault with others, than to be faultless ourselves."
True whether we're frowning at little sisters, aggressive drivers, or the way the short order diner cook mangled your eggs and bacon.
Truer still when editing!
Whether we're too close to our subjects, too familiar with our stories, or too quick to read what we meant rather than what we wrote, the labor of self-editing can sometimes feel more like a slog than a joy. Yet, the flaws in others' writing, from the lowly typo to the organizational structure, seize your attention in an exploding fireworks display.
Become a master of disguise.
Sneak up on your writing and pretend it isn't yours. One excellent technique requires nothing more than the dictation feature in Microsoft Word.
Image: computer microphone and audio bar
Open a new document. Choose a logical but finite chunk of your writing—a chapter, a paragraph, a scene—and read it out loud. The dictation will transcribe your words as you read them.
You'll end with a big block of text, a single run-on sentence with no punctuation. Don't freak out! This is exactly what you're going for, i.e. turning your own words into something a bit foreign to you.
Then, working through the text block word by word and sentence by sentence, you'll edit your chunk by correcting, adding, subtracting, compressing, expanding, and beautifying as you go.
To turn on the dictation function, follow this path:
Mac: System Settings->Keyboard->Dictation (toggle on)
Windows: Home->Dictate