Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Diary of an Author - Day 22

I'm currently in a spat with a member in my writer's group over my typos in my last submission. She says there are so many, she can't get through it. OMG She should have seen A Kiss for Emily the first time I got it back from CreateSpace as a proof. We found an additional 100 typos (usually wrong word not picked up by spell check).

What some people fail to understand, especially for those who can do it well, typing, spelling, and proof reading can be VERY FRICKIN' difficult for those who don't do it well. Perhaps if people took the time to understand reading/writing disorders, left-right dyslexia, and other related disorders, they would see the good, not focus on the bad.

Generally, as I fix one paragraph, I'll add one or two different mistakes. Typing a sentence like, The dog is very hairy, will usually come out like this for me the first time I type it, THe god si voiy hiary.

Today, I will spend at least 45 minutes typing these easy few paragraphs.

1 comment:

  1. Dyslexia would make it rough, but there are some of who can't type at all, not a single sentence; therefore they use voice recognition software. For someone like that, they are going to spend a lot of time going back over their own writing to correct typos made because the machine didn't hear their spoken word correctly; or maybe they don't speak too clearly. It causes a lot of extra work for the writer and takes extra time to get it right; but if it is the person's goal to be a writer, then that's part of the job -- submitting your best work even in a workshop, so that other members can focus on helping improve the style or story and things the writer didn't notice, rather than typos that the writer is capable of correcting. By not spending so much time discussing where an apostrophe should go, when the writer already knows that information, the other members will be spending their time assisting in areas the writer might not see. It happens. She may have thought she was being helpful by suggesting everyone submit a near typo-free copy. It's possible.

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