DanMargarita.com

Back when I attended the Robin Hood Elementary School, I would routinely do well in spelling contests but could never quite seem to win (sort of the Indianapolis Colts of spelling…no, there’s no bitterness on my part). I still get a slight pain when I recall being stumped by the word “bureau” in the finals, before deciding to hang ‘em up (although I’m not exactly sure what a speller hangs up).

Modern technology has rendered spelling ability somewhat moot since most writers now use computers which contain some form of “spell check” function. Once upon a time, that was called a “dictionary.” The problem with “spell check” is that it can make a writer lazy, relying on the function to correct your mistakes. That’s fine if you misspell a word that the computer doesn’t recognize, but if you misspell it as another, actual word, the computer doesn’t realize that you didn’t want that word. Could you follow that? Unfortunately, there is no “logic check” function on my laptop.

For example, those of you that read of my trip to Chicago with my father (“A Bear and His Cub Return to the Windy City”) may recall that a dinner we attended was hosted by Brian McCaskey of the Chicago Bears. Those of you that haven’t read it, have no idea what I’m talking about. When I returned from the trip, I wrote a thank-you letter on my computer to Brian and then printed and mailed it. After dropping it in a mailbox, I had a panic attack and had to check my computer to make sure I didn’t begin the letter with “Dear Brain.” As “brain” is an actual word, my spell-check would not have highlighted it.

This is fair warning to any students reading this to make sure that they don’t do a book report on “The Dairy of Anne Frank.”

Of course, we’re so lucky to have computers to write with today. When I try to imagine what Charles Dickens had to go through to write a novel, it’s chilling. Ballpoint pens didn’t even exist then, so Dickens and his contemporaries had to dip their pen into an ink well repeatedly every few minutes and scrawl by hand. That sounds like a task that would be assigned to Oliver Twist as a punishment.

If Dickens wanted to rewrite something, he had to literally rewrite it. There was no highlighting, cutting and pasting, just actual cutting and pasting.

Part of my problem is that my brain works faster than my fingers can type on my computer keyboard. I never took a typing class, so my method is strictly the “hunt & peck” (sounds like a law firm) method. I use two fingers, but after several years, I can go pretty quickly. Yet it’s not fast enough to keep up with what I’m thinking which often leads me to skip several words in a sentence as I get anxious to type the end of a thought, such as:

“That’s when I decided that I would like I did before.”

Distractions can also be a problem so that I don’t pay as much attention as I should to what I’m writing like if I’m watching TV while I’m writing and wind up including the dialogue from the tube:

“I joined an online dating service in order to meet someone as a blast kills 50 in Iraq.”

It’s not that I don’t proof-read, because I do. I just don’t do it very well. I think many writers might agree with me that one can reread something thirty times and not notice the errors until you see it in print or find something they missed over and over again. This is why I pay someone to do my taxes.

That’s one area where I can’t afford to overlook anything.