Editing - Because You're Not a Genius

Wayne From The Wonder Years (in case you missed the reference)

Despite years of inflicting psychological torture, I have convinced my little brother to help me edit some of the work I'm trying to crank out.  He's got a full scholarship to law school, so he's no Billy Carter or anything. My initial hubris led me to believe that editing your own work was the way to go.  I do it at my job all the time, so what's the big deal. 

However, one peril of the self-publishing industry is that you don't have teams of poindexters to read over your manuscript before it goes to print.  Stephen Knight found this out the hard way, when one of his readers notified him of a typo (apparently it pisses people off and makes you look like a rube).  I'm reading his book The Gathering Dead right now (which I recommend), and it is page-to-page action.  I guess when you're reading your own work, you're looking more at the big picture and overall themes rather than a comma being out of place or whether each sentence is comprehensible.

So, thank you, little brother, for helping me stay on the straight and narrow and not look like an imbecile.

Editing - Because You're Not a Genius