“Mistakes are a part of being human.  Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way.  Unless it’s a fatal mistake, which at least, others can learn from.”  Al Franken “Oh, the Things I Know”

 

Okay, I’m not telling anyone to go out and make mistakes.  But I’ve made a few…dozen.  And my message is clear, just because you spell your hero’s name wrong throughout your entire manuscript, that’s no reason to give up writing and take up a life of crime.  Even if you should have learned your lesson the first time with a different manuscript when you misspelled the heroine’s name.  The lesson here is, Spell Check does not know your character’s names—although, that would be helpful.

“If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.”  Tallulah Bankhead

My mistakes can be put into categories, starting with grammar & punctuation, my tormentor.  The use of you’re and your, along with it’s and its are problems of my past.  My present is still plagued with comma usage dilemmas that not even an on-line class could cure.  As one Ruby Slippered Sister can attest, at one time I was having a love affair with the semi-colon.  I have a restraining order against him now.  I replaced that love affair with an unhealthy obsession with the em-dash. I have the ability to use the word “that” in nearly every sentence I write.  Sometimes I can slip it in twice.  I won’t even start on my spelling, or my propensity to use the wrong word. 

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes in a very narrow field.”  Niels Bohr

Formatting:  I think I’ve got that pretty much licked, but as recent as two years ago, I didn’t know to start my manuscript a third of the way down the page. I still have people complain about my two spaces after a period, but they need to get counseling and get over it, as my husband is fond of saying.

“If I had my life to live over…I’d dare to make more mistakes next time.”  Nadine Stair

Technology is not my friend.  When I write, I take pen to paper.  Why?  I don’t know.  Many functions in Word are a mystery to me.  Folks, I learned how to type on a typewriter.  Thankfully, it was electric.  Every time I jump one hurdle, someone puts another in my way so I have the opportunity to make more blunders.  These hurdles have names like Track Changes, Websites, attachments, and blogs, just to name a few.  Things I haven’t mastered are many, because I’m afraid of bringing down the entire Internet, causing the world to come to a complete standstill and implode. 

“Mistakes are the portals of discovery.”  James Joyce

Miscellaneous:  Okay, so I misquoted the lyrics to a Beatles song on the first page of my manuscript.  What’s the big deal?  Is that a crime?  I liked my lyrics better, and everybody else did, too, because nobody caught it for like a year.  While editing my manuscript, Lily in Wonderland, I suddenly realized my hero was wearing street clothes, and then like Superman, he was miraculously wearing his sheriff’s uniform, and he didn’t even slip into a phone booth.  I’ve started my manuscript with back-story, mixed my tenses, and done my fair share of head hopping.  I’ve used weak verbs and I’m notorious for telling instead of showing.  

“If you have made mistakes, even serious ones, there is always another chance for you.  What we call failure is not the falling down but the staying down.”  Mary Pickford 

I wish I could say this is a complete list of my mistakes.  It’s the tip of the iceberg.  And if you think this is a blog game where you get to hunt for the mistakes I’ve intentionally added, you’re wrong.  Any and all errors in this blog are purely accidental.  And FYI, my quotes came from www.quotationspage.com

I’m giving away a Ruby Slipper key chain to one lucky commenter.  I wish I could show you a picture, but I haven’t figured out how to add an image.  So tell me about your biggest mistake.  Bigger the better.  Don’t be shy.  We don’t judge…much.