Ever Surprised by Your Own Errors?

[Storyteller5]

After my second draft was finished and gone over 12000 times, I let my beta readers have it to read/pick apart/etc. Going through the comments, I'm amazed (and a little disgusted) at the number of errors I somehow missed. I think after looking at it so many times, I just wasn't seeing it anymore because I know what I meant, whether it was on the page correctly or not. :e2smack:

Thank goodness for betas! :Hail:

Does this happen to anyone else? :e2poke:

[Khazarkhum]

Sure! Every single freakin' time. You get blind to the mistakes. It's God's way of saying, "Get thee a beta!"

[ChunkyC]

Oh, definitely. That's why there are so many 'tricks' out there to help a writer when editing; such as reading the work out loud, changing the font, editing a printout, etc. All are designed to help you take a bit fresher look at things and hopefully you'll catch stuff you missed.

[Sean D. Schaffer]

This happens to me all the time. Every time I go over a manuscript, no matter how many times I've corrected it, I will find something wrong with the piece.

Guaranteed. :rolleyes:

But like others have pointed out, reading your work out loud is one great way of finding more errors, although it can get tiresome. Also, if you get impatient, your reading out loud might do you little to no good. If you become impatient, you may end up speed-reading (I've done this on numerous occasions) and going over words that are misspelled but that you would think you would never be guilty of misspelling. Because of this, be careful when re-reading your own work, even out loud.

[zahra]

Actually, my own stupidity has ceased to surprise me. I feel that's a step forward. :D

[Soccer Mom]

Yup. I must have betas. I proof and read aloud and stuff, but my betas always catch stuff. I'm dyslexic, although I can spot errors in other's work. Just not my own.

Sigh.

[narnia]

I was working on a non-fiction thing once for someone else, and a rather long Greek religious title (can't remember which one exactly :) ) got auto changed in Word to 'Prophylactic', in numerous places.

I didn't find it until an hour before I hit send .... :tongue

[Sean D. Schaffer]

I was working on a non-fiction thing once for someone else, and a rather long Greek religious title (can't remember which one exactly :) ) got auto changed in Word to 'Prophylactic', in numerous places.

I didn't find it until an hour before I hit send .... :tongue


Oh dear. That must have been such fun, changing everything back the right way.

I get the same thing with OpenOffice Writer. Its default setting is to AutoCorrect, and I am going to have to go in, probably tomorrow when I write my short story second draft, so I can change it.

And I will likely forget about the needed changes until I've spelled one of the fantasy names in the piece (maybe even the title -- oh joy!) and have it changed as I type it.


An error I found in my present WIP, actually occurred while I typed on the Olympia. I wanted to write the word 'designed'. I did not think about the spelling as I typed it, until I realized I had put too many letters in. I had to quickly strike out the word 'disegnigned' and then re-spell it properly behind it. (That's what I get for not having any of that black ribbon with the correctable stuff on the bottom, but it's definitely good for writing first drafts; makes me have to think, which I like!)

[L M Ashton]

Actually, my own stupidity has ceased to surprise me. I feel that's a step forward. :D That I can definitely get on board with. :)

[GeorgieB]

Actually, my own stupidity has ceased to surprise me. I feel that's a step forward. :D

Yes, I learned a long time ago to never underestimate my capacity to err.

I once said that I'd made two errors in my life. The first was the actual error, the second was to admit it. :tongue

[Maryn]

I find that a long stretch of letting my WIP ripen unseen in a figurative drawer (no peeking!) lets me see errors with fresh eyes.

Although betas are wonderful too, of course.

Maryn, who's learned a lot about her weaknesses as a writer from betas

[LilliCray]

Every so often, I'll be writing a sentence (usually describing something unusual) and I'll spend so much time thinking how to word it that I forget to make it a whole sentence. I've put two sentence fragments in my old novella-in-a-drawer that way.

It was depressing. To err is human... to write is divine-ish. Sorta. Kinda. Sometimes.