It is sometimes difficult to be your own critic and to see clearly the changes that must be made to a paper. There are several reasons for this, including the effort you’ve put into the paper. Can you become your own editor and review your writing with a critical eye? How?

Yes you can become your own editor and review your own writing. Honestly it is kind of hard because you believe that your work is great and there are no changes to be made. We all fall short of that sometimes most of all of the time but it is okay. Here are some steps that I am going to follow of which are stated in the text:

*Print out a hard copy of your paper
*Read through your paper, paragraph by paragraph. Highlight your thesis and the topic sentence of each paragraph.
*Using the thesis and topic sentences as starting points, outline the ideas you presented-just as you would do outlining a chapter in a textbook. Do not look at the outline you created during prewriting.
*Next, reread your paper more slowly, looking for how ideas flow from sentence to sentence. Identify where adding a transition or recasting a sentence would make the ideas flow more logically.
*Review the topics on your outline. Is there a logical flow of ideas? Identify any places where you may need to reorganize ideas
*Revise your paper to improve organization. Move around paragraphs if needed. Than go into adding transitional phrases if needed. Take out words you don’t necessarily need. Tweak topic sentences if needed.

It may seem like a lot but really it’s not. Take your time and good luck.