12 thoughts on “Friday, October 22, 2021

  1. Hey OTP,
    To whoever is reading Kensington Island, I caught where I wrote the word “single” in a paragraph 3 freaking times!! Lol. My bad for not proofreading before posting last night. I was on the phone with someone while photographing the page….got distracted. But no worries! I have corrected this error in the actual manuscript. May repost with corrections and next page. Thank you 🤗

  2. Hi, NRAWLS73,

    You think that’s bad? On the first page of Caroline Says I gave the main character (Caroline) 2 names. Near the bottom of the page she’s called ‘Nicole’. I must’ve read that page a dozen times before noticing. For a long time, she was ‘Nicole’ in my head before she became Caroline. I guess that’s where computers come into their own, just press ‘find’ and change. Later on, I find further mistakes and had to add ‘erratum’ notes. I keep postcards of important info on each page: names, places, times, events, physical appearance, but one is still working at speed and mistakes will happen. But it’s a typewriter. I just keep moving forward…

    1. Lol! I made that mistake too with the grandfather in the story. His name is Angus (Poppy) but I started writing him as Barnaby (the dad’s name) for a page or two before I caught it! Yep, definitely part of the excitement of using typewriters!

    2. No one can adequately proofread their own work. We see things that aren’t there, and gloss over things that are. Not sure there’s any “solution” — I think that’s just how our brains are wired. Designed to keep proofreaders humble.

  3. Four, if you count single-room dwelling. But it does’t seem as clunky to me as it does to you. We’re our own worst critics. Still, it’s always good to have an editor. The only thing I don’t like about OTP is that nobody edits what I write. Makes me uncomfortable.

      1. Meanwhile, back in Pedant’s Corner: Erm…I think the word is ‘altogether’. Sorry, it’s the English teacher in me.

  4. We type. It’s raw. It’s in the moment. If you want closer to ‘perfection’, you could word process it, do initial editing, spell check it, run it through advanced grammar check, do a second edit and print it out in American Typewriter font. But we type.

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