900 billion little yellow squares

Actually, 89. Three inches by three inches. Out of a lovely buttery yellow fabric, part of an elaborately geometric quilt I’m making for a baby due to make her debut within weeks.

I got through several and thought to myself, “Wait… HOW many yellow squares do I need again?”

Not 89 — 49! Right there in my handwriting.

I counted the number I’d already cut.

48.

So. I got lucky.

It’s so easy to make little mistakes — or to overlook something little that has big consquences. You hear it from many authors going through copyedits — how could I miss this? One fellow blogger, but I can’t recall who, discovered that a character went from being in the house to being in the car, with no transition or anything.

Back in my intern days, I read a whole Tom Clancy-esque script about a guy who has to keep some nuclear launch codes out of the hands of the bad guys. They are in a labyrinthine underground facility that is built somehow near a lava flow. This man used every trick he could think of to keep the codes secure — except immediately, I thought, “Why doesn’t he throw the launch codes into the lava?” And I continued to think that for the rest of the screenplay. And I think it to this very day.

A book I read earlier this year has a character whose name magically changes 5/6 of the way through the book.

A book I just finished and really liked, Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, used the word “purchase” (“her feet found purchase on the hoverboard”) probably four times.

Another book somehow found the phrase “rumor has it” transformed to “room or has it”. It took me a long time to figure out what was meant. And I still don’t know how something like that could happen.

These are the things writers hate to find in their own writing. Hate hate hate. At one dog show voice-over, I realized that I’d written somethng like, “Prized purebred poodles push for a point.” (That’s an estimation.) And no one caught how ridiculous it was until the host actually tried to say it, and went tumbling down into the verbal booby-trap I’d written for him.

I’m not sure when my copyedits will be finished. I’m actually kind of hoping the copyeditor says, at least once, “You use the word ’stuck’ eight times on this page.” Because then I’ll know someone’s on the watch for that stuff.

What I don’t want is emails and letters from readers gloating about spelling and grammar errors in the final product!

PS – From what I can tell, cheese is at least mildly addictive, because it contains casein. That explains sooooooo much about my cheese-eating habits.

Related posts:

1. Stop and smell the shurploz.
2. Sometimes you just walk across the room.
3. Ultimate nerd confession bonanza!!! + a little rambling.

June 9th, 2007 Katie Alender

Tags: writing