Completing a short story or novel is a wonderful feeling for authors who are eager to get their work in front of agents, publishers, and ultimately, readers.

If you haven't had your work copyedited or at least proofread yet, you may be jumping the gun. Most authors are too close to their writing to notice small mistakes, which is why it's often for the best to have another set of eyes take a look at it.

Having your work copyedited can help catch grammatical errors, problems with punctuation, or complications with style and flow.

Having it proofread ensures a clean manuscript with no distractive errors.

Even if you're an expert in the English language, you may not see the tiny problems in your own work. Don't let a missing comma or misused homophone take an agent, publisher, or reader out of "the zone" while they're immersed in your masterpiece.