Last week a good friend of mine, who occasionally moonlights as a writer, smugly told me to “get it together, sister” and learn to better edit the things I write. She basically implied, more or less, that if I were ever going to become a successful writer I would need to be free of spelling, typo, and grammatical errors. She then taunted me even more by stating that since I had my BA in English that I should, therefore, be a perfect self-editor and that any good writer – one who’s taken seriously and who makes an actual living as a writer - would be able to catch all their mistakes. So in essence she told me my frequently typo-ridden writing, regardless of form or content, was lacking and, basically, just so much crap under her superior shoe (or at least that’s how I took it in a moment of extreme sensitivity).

My first initial insane-o reaction was to pull all her hair out, tell her to F**K Off, and then leap out of the moving car and find comfort in a pint of ice cream. Instead I maturely (and boringly) told her that just because I majored in English it didn’t mean I knew everything there was to know about the degree and that editing my own mistakes has always been my biggest weakness (we have since smoothed things over and I can now appreciate her effort, if not her execution, in trying to help me be a better writer). Go figure! I accept it (despite the fact that I struggle each and every time I write something to make sure it is mistake free, but re-reading and re-re-reading and re-re-re-reading rarely leaves my writing error-free) and I have learned to embrace my shortcoming – even though I curse myself after something has been posted or printed with a glaring typo in it.

Many people don’t know this about me (and I’m so embarrased to admit this) but I was in Special Ed for three years in Elementary School. I had to leave my normal class - in front of all my fellow students who knew and mocked me becuase I was “different” from the rest of them - each day for three hours and go to my “special” class (boo-hoo, right?). Apparently I had a learning problem and I couldn’t grasp Math (and I still can’t) and English, as well as having some sorta emotional problems – I was prone to crying a lot or some garbage like that (I don’t know what they are talking about!). I was behind my entire class in reading, writing, and yup, spelling, and this “special” class time, along side my fellow slow-learners with emotions “issues”, was the best way for me to get caught up. 

So for me, as an adult, to not only go to college (I am the first in my family to graduate) but to also have a BA in English from a great university like BYU is a huge accomplishment. Heck, for me to even be writing for Shotgun Reviews (yay!)  and Newsarama (whoopie) is an even bigger accomplishment. Despite these “literary” achievements no matter how hard I strive to be a spelling and typo free wiz I always seem to be humbled yet again by my failings. Ugh.

I do believe a writer loses credibility when he/she has a piece that is loaded with errors, but, I wonder, and pray, that in the end, will one or two “whoopsies” win out over content.  Maybe I’m just trying, in vain, to justify my cry-baby back story and I really do need to “get it together,” but isn’t having a creative writing voice, having something to say, better than being a typo Nazi with bland and boring prose (not speaking about my friend here, because she is fab!)? Boy howdy, I hope so! Besides, isn’t that why the universe created Editors, to help slow-joe freaks like me?

I was pretty darn upset after that discussion, more so because I let this friend of mine have power over me (I’m not Josie Grossie anymore!) and that I allowed her to shake my belief in myself and my talents (as meager as they may be), until I suddenly, and surprisingly, found comfort in the most recent DC Nation column in the back of last week’s DC Comics. For a Senior DC Comic employee in charge of catching mistakes and errors to submit the following blurb with an obvious typo (she misses a “to” in her sentence), well, suddenly I felt all was right with the world again and that there was still hope for someone like me. It’s amazing how this small blunder brought me such a super bright, warm smile of hope. It made me realize that anything is possible, handicaps and all, if you work hard and believe in yourself.

Nobody’s perfect after all, not even professionals who get paid to be!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 8:18 pm and is filed under Brian Andersen, Op-Ed, Random, Shameless Self-Promotion. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.