"Mistakes, I've made a slew,
so it's time to make a mention...
There will be more, much more than this,
cause I do it my way.
For me, writing is bittersweet. I love playing with words but my editing skills suck! I can't seem to put out a perfect blog, when I read it back I only see what was in my head, not all the mistakes my fingers make. Some misspellings are caught with spell check, others sneak through but it's the ones that I screw up on consistently that annoy me. Why can't I see them? I can read the story over and over and not see the error of my ways as my brain skips over the misspelled words like a flat rock on a still lake. If I don't force myself to slow down and concentrate on each individual word I goof.
Some people think the wheel and sliced bread are revolutionary but I think Spell Check is right up there with the greatest of life's tools. Without it, my warts would show as I can't spell for beans. I couldn't fight my way out of a wet bag of words unless they were all two or three letters.
Sometimes printing the story will help, seeing it in another format other than the computer screen; mistakes will jump off the page as if catapulted from a loaded gun. But there are some words that spell check accepts as real words and this blog doesn't come with a bad grammar detector so I screw up "it's" versus "its" a lot. I completely know the difference but my darn fingers are typing so quickly that one or the other shoots out randomly and it's a fifty/fifty chance of being right. I am more than familiar with the word "lose" but my fingers type "loose" every bloody time. It's like a programed, ingrained blunder that I can't seem to overcome. My subconscious plays tricks on me, setting me up for embarrassment when it should have my back.
I can read a blog ten times and finally give it the okay but once published, I read it again and go oh crap. It's an interesting phenomena, not being able to see my own mistakes, because if asked to check other people's work, I can spot a blooper a mile away. For me, self editing is like self medicating, not recommended.
Some people think the wheel and sliced bread are revolutionary but I think Spell Check is right up there with the greatest of life's tools. Without it, my warts would show as I can't spell for beans. I couldn't fight my way out of a wet bag of words unless they were all two or three letters.
Sometimes printing the story will help, seeing it in another format other than the computer screen; mistakes will jump off the page as if catapulted from a loaded gun. But there are some words that spell check accepts as real words and this blog doesn't come with a bad grammar detector so I screw up "it's" versus "its" a lot. I completely know the difference but my darn fingers are typing so quickly that one or the other shoots out randomly and it's a fifty/fifty chance of being right. I am more than familiar with the word "lose" but my fingers type "loose" every bloody time. It's like a programed, ingrained blunder that I can't seem to overcome. My subconscious plays tricks on me, setting me up for embarrassment when it should have my back.
I can read a blog ten times and finally give it the okay but once published, I read it again and go oh crap. It's an interesting phenomena, not being able to see my own mistakes, because if asked to check other people's work, I can spot a blooper a mile away. For me, self editing is like self medicating, not recommended.
I know I goof, I have my friends on alert to point them out...I go ooops and fix the most blatant of screw-ups but it's too late, everyone saw them and I feel like I've been caught in my undies. But then I think why? It's not like I'm a professional writer that needs to polish every word, phrase or sentence. Blogs are for fun right? Chasing perfectionism is a race I'll never win so I need to be content to walk instead of run. I'm not so anal that I loose sleep over it...crap...see I did it again...I'm nothing if not consistent!
The fact that I feel compelled to confess this flaw means it bothers me more than I care to admit but now that it's out in the open I can go on butchering words and be covered under the umbrella of admission. So I'm sending a huge apology for all the mistakes I've made in the past, the ones I will undoubtedly do today and all those looming ahead in my future. I guess I just need to accept the things I cannot change............I'll continue to enjoy playing around with words, but have to accept that I just can't spell them!
The fact that I feel compelled to confess this flaw means it bothers me more than I care to admit but now that it's out in the open I can go on butchering words and be covered under the umbrella of admission. So I'm sending a huge apology for all the mistakes I've made in the past, the ones I will undoubtedly do today and all those looming ahead in my future. I guess I just need to accept the things I cannot change............I'll continue to enjoy playing around with words, but have to accept that I just can't spell them!
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