For the proofreaders

Without hoom the senter wood knot hold :-)

I've mentioned before that I tippy-tap out material on the run. I am also possessed of an adorable dyslexia that often simply blinds me to simple spelling and punctuation errors that I make as the words come pouring out of my head.

Ironically, I’m a very good editor...of other people’s work. I just can’t carve into my own words until I’ve let them cool down for a day or several, and the postpartum cowl caul* of what I meant to say has faded away enough to let me read what I actually said.

Unfortunately, blogging – at least as I must do it – does not allow for such a stately pace of things, so goofy shit makes it onto the page. Things that I would certainly mark against if it were in a paper submitted to me for grading, and things that would scandalize every English teacher I’ve ever had, and every writing group I’ve ever been a part of.

So occasionally I feel a distant twinge of guilt at not being able to comb out all the unlovelies (I swear it’ll all be perfect when I stitch it all together in The Book) before it goes public.

And then I see something like this in the NYT, above the fold...



...and I sleep smugly once again.


* (Ok, just this once :-)