Eagle eyes

I am fortunate that my friend came to visit today as she spied a spelling mistake that I had missed in my children’s book, Ty’s Roller Coaster Ride. This eagle-eyed spotting prompted me to read the text backwards from the last word in the book and it was not long before I spied another mis-spelled word. It is too easy for the brain to read letters where there are none, but this tip of reading the text backwards, means that one concentrates on each word and is more likely to pick up any errors. The two words in question were carriage, spelt without the first a and would without the l. One would think these would be obvious, but not so. It was the same when I was proofing The Collective Us. No matter how many times I read the text, there were still more errors popping up. And with these blogs too. I read and re read them and often it is not until I transfer the text onto the actual website and it is spread differently on the page that I spot something I have missed. And yet still the odd mistake slips past me.

My story is a short one, so one would think it would be relatively easy to have 100% accuracy. I wish it was. My friend suggested a couple more changes and these were replacing two words, lad and compound. I replaced both, lad with the character’s name, Ty, and compound with gates, becoming Ty charged through the gates instead of Ty charged into the compound. My friend is a former Kindergarten teacher and well-used to reading children’s stories. She thought compound reminded her of a prison, while she insisted that children wouldn’t know what a lad was. Both good points, as I really am out of touch with modern children’s words.

I have sent these four changes through to my niece who is illustrating the book, along with another, where we removed the word ‘now’ in one of the sentences. Yesterday we were at the point of getting the work ready for printing. I thought I really had made all the changes I wanted. I have not heard from her. She is a very busy woman, building a house, looking after a young baby and preparing items for a weekly market. She has been incredibly patient with me but I am sure that has been stretched at times. Sorry Lisa.

I think I will stop reading the text. As Stephen pointed out, there has to come a time when one says ‘enough’. I cannot see any more spelling or other errors. I need to be satisfied that I have this story where I want it.