WRITING MAKES THE TIME FLY

Nothing tells me it is summer more than looking at the thermometer and seeing we’ve hit the century mark. When did that happen? I’ve had my nose (and mind) buried in the new book for the past couple of weeks, trying to make sure everything is perfect before it goes to press. Yesterday I went out and suddenly noticed that it is really hot. The “monsoons” haven’t arrived yet, so we don’t have the thunderstorms to cool us down in the afternoons.

Writing is something that comes easy to me, but getting it right doesn’t. So, I thought I would share the most common boo-boos that my editor found with my manuscript. Some are silly mistakes. Come to think of it, most are, because I should know better. I know that some would-be writers are afraid to commit their stories to paper because they’re afraid they aren’t perfect enough. So, here’s imperfect. Look at it and see if you can’t do better.

The worst thing I did (I think) was not sticking to the same usage throughout the book. Not even through one paragraph. I sometimes wrote “US” and sometimes, “U.S.” Same with Washington DC, and Washington D.C. And sometimes I wrote the forties, the 1940s, and ‘40s. I didn’t notice, but my editor sure did!

To make it worse, when I got the manuscript back, I thought I could go under “edit” and “find ,” then type in US and change all of them to U.S. at the same time. What a mistake that was. I was really confused when my program showed it had found over 1000 uses of US. No, I thought! There’s no way that I mentioned the United States that many times. It didn’t take me long to figure out what had happened, but by then I had to go all the way back and check each U.S. separately until I got it straightened out. Unfortunately, it had automatically changed every place “US” or “us” appeared, even in the middle of words like cU.S.tard and tumultuoU.S.

The same thing happened with DC. Suddenly words like grandchildren became granD.C.hildren. Now I have to read each page carefully to change them all!

Then there was number usage. I know the rule: ten or under, you spell the word out. Over ten you use the number. Just one of those stupid mistakes I make when my mind is working on autopilot. When thoughts are flying at me, my mission becomes to get them entered into the computer and not worry about mistakes until later. However, I should have caught these simple problems when I proofread the manuscript before sending it to the editor.

It’s getting corrected, but I’ve spend extra time now trying to get it all straightened out. What’s my message here? If I can get a book written and published, considering the ridiculoU.S. mistakes I make, then I know each of you can do better. Next time, read about more of my goofs that the editor caught!

NOTE: Some of this newsletter’s talented subscribers submitted essays to my new book. You can read some of these great essays when the book gets published—hopefully this month.