You read that right.
See, sometimes I will be reading a book and find a typo, and I will think to myself: how did they let that happen? They, being the author and editor and whomever else reads the manuscript with a well-focused eye. How can they let that one slip by?
This week I learned the answer to my question: very easily.
I must’ve read my manuscript on the computer at least 50 times…if we count the poems on their own, 100…I have some pieces memorized. I have had FIVE people besides myself read the document. Yet, not one of us noticed the typos.
I, myself, carry the most shame, not having noticed that some commas seemed to have packed up and moved on out somewhere between my original chicken-scratched poem and my proof copy. Maybe they were never there, existing only mentally, but I really think they were. Anyway, after the fifth readthrough and struggling with Google Docs all day so that Sahar could help me edit, I just read it though once more, took notes on every mistake I found, wrote up the email, and sent it to the publisher.
And I know. I know I will get that first copy of my book in my hand. I know I will read it, and I know what I will find. A typo. A lost comma. A capitalization mistake. Something, anything…some blunder. Some error I will take to my grave because that’s the way my brain works.
Anyway, that’s how I spent my weekend. Now, I have a desire to clean my ransacked house, as I do every Monday after the kiddos leave, so this blog is quite short and not all that interesting. Unless of course you, like I, have ever wondered how someone could miss an obvious typo.
It is very, very easy.
Ham 'N Eggs 