Mistakes! Argh! – I hate them (don’t we all) – Yesterday I wrote and edited the phrase “an assortment of characters”, turning it into “a range of characters” – only, of course, I changed the word “assorted” to “range” but not the “an” to “a” – so out it popped, showing the world that here’s one “writer” who hasn’t got a handle on grammar – IT’S NOT TRUE, I TELL YOU, it’s the flaw of fast editing!
I do read what I post. Honestly. I read it several times as I write it up, again before I hit that publish button, and – fortunately – once more after it’s out there. Perhaps seeing it in a different format has things jump out that I otherwise miss, but I DO see the errors (and yes, fix them).
Meanwhile, of course, a bunch of people have already seen my fumbling result and the whole stands out like clear advertising that I really don’t have a handle on writing!!!
Heck yes, spelling and grammatical mistakes annoy the [insert expletive-of-your-choice] out of me, but only when those mistakes are mine.
On a scale of 1 to 10, it pans out like this:
Other people’s errors… 1
Other people’s errors in books… 3
My errors… 12
My errors in books… 375
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I know. I should slow down. Trouble is, I trust my fingers to know what they are doing and my mind doesn’t seem to register the slip up until I look at it yet again.
I’m sure I’m not alone in this, we’re all human.
For the most part I’m a fairly fast typist, but my mind is directing from someplace way ahead and my fingers are keeping up with me as best they can – words get abbreviated or missed altogether. Sometimes they double up or words are supplanted with other words that form from pattern recognition that has gone the wrong path (our might become out, for instance). Most of my mistakes, however, come through editing, when I’m changing things and/or swapping things about. I find more errors in places that I have edited than were ever there in the first place!
Makes me think I should write it once and after that leave the thing jolly well alone.
Oh well… back into the fray.
Have a great day, everyone.
Cheers! 😀
Allyson
Bloodstone Sci Fi 
Typos are one of the demons at a writer’s keyboard. The job of editing a manuscript is a very tough one. For me, it’s even tougher, especially as I don’t speak English as my first.
For my story serial, once I through with an episode, I send it to my editor. Of course, the passage rarely returns without a red marks here and there begging to be revisited.
I used to think that those who speak English as their traditional language don’t have problems with it’s usage from time to time. But your words reaffirm the fact that no one can claim to be perfect in terms of the use of English.
A human editor is a gift to every writer. The process is as difficult as the writing itself. Thanks for this post.
English is a very difficult language and I believe one of the hardest to learn, so those who learn it young or as a first language do have an advantage. I write fairly informally and in line with the way most people think and speak – I do this because I want the words to disappear and the message to remain (if that makes sense), so I’m after something that’s relaxed and connects with people, but I’m sure if an English Literature professor looked at my work, there would be red lines and circles all over the place.
My point is that what you see in a text book (any language, any subject), is not what you want to see in a storybook, which by nature must carry more emotion.
I really enjoy your writing. I love how your stories start simply and then expand and evolve into something more complex as the reader is drawn more deeply within. With each section I read, I feel I know that world more and more.
Editing – yep. I do my own. I go over it and over it, probably a dozen times by the time I’m through, and when I think it’s perfect, I get Greg to read it (just the once, it has to be fresh for him so he can give me his views on the whole of it), and STILL he finds a heap of things I have missed. As I work through them and put them right, I think “How could I have missed this?” I think that a writer, knowing their work so well, can easily skim over the work they “know” is good – reading, but not reading slowly, seeing each word. I try not to do that, yet it happens all the time. I think that’s true of all of us, so you are not alone.
Cheers! 🙂