The hardest thing about editing your own writing is that you wrote it. You know what you meant, so your brain reads what you meant rather than what is actually on the page. Professional writers have editors precisely because of this. Most of us do not. Here is how to be your own editor anyway.

Put time between writing and editing

The single most effective technique. Write the draft, then leave it — overnight if possible, at least a few hours. When you return, the words have gone cold enough that you read them as a stranger would. The errors your brain hid from you become visible.

Change how the text looks

Your brain memorises the visual shape of your draft. Break that memory: change the font, change the background colour, read it on a different device, print it out. The unfamiliar appearance forces fresh reading and reveals errors you skipped over a dozen times.

Read it out loud

Covered elsewhere on this site in more depth, but it belongs in any editing guide. Your ear catches clumsy rhythm, repetition, and missing words that your eye glides past. Read slowly, as if to another person.

Edit in separate passes

Do not try to fix everything at once. One pass for structure (is the argument right?). One pass for clarity (is each sentence clear?). One pass for grammar and spelling. Trying to do all three simultaneously means doing all three badly.

Use a tool as your second pair of eyes

This is exactly what grammar tools are for — catching the mechanical errors your brain refuses to see in your own work. Run your final draft through one. Not as a replacement for your own editing, but as a backstop for what you missed.

You will never be a perfect editor of your own work. But these techniques close most of the gap between you and someone reading your writing for the first time.