{"id":3659,"date":"2014-08-23T20:21:45","date_gmt":"2014-08-24T00:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3659"},"modified":"2015-01-03T06:14:54","modified_gmt":"2015-01-03T11:14:54","slug":"your-brain-has-priorities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3659","title":{"rendered":"Your Brain Has Priorities"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"typo,<\/a>

(photo: David Sim, CC & cropped)<\/p><\/div>\n

My second novel. 78,000 words. Respectable length, not one that would panic an agent or publisher. (Unless you\u2019re Stephen King or Dona Tartt, forget the 700-page doorstops. ) I\u2019ve read all the advice to new writers: get an editor (I\u2019ve been editing people\u2019s stuff for . . . a long time\u2014skip that step), have it proofread (pfout<\/em>! I can spot a typo like Annie Oakley nailing the ace of spades). Hit the send button, set the big envelopes on the postage scale, and trundle them out to the mailbox. Done!<\/p>\n

Except. Except that every time I look at my perfect manuscript, I find, horrors!, a typo. A word missing. An editing faux pas. Have I blown it? Big time? Nick Stockton\u2019s recent Wired article<\/a> on why we miss our own mistakes sheds some light on the problem. \u201cTypos suck,\u201d he says. \u201cThey are saboteurs, undermining your intent, causing your resume [or the novel you\u2019ve spent two years writing] to land in the \u2018pass\u2019 pile.\u201d Spotting other people\u2019s errors, no problem. Like the LinkedIn blurb I saw today for a job-seeker who wrote, \u201cI also have string organizational, self-management and interpersonal skills.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our own typos elude us, Stockton says, not \u201cbecause we\u2019re stupid or careless,\u201d quite the opposite. He quotes psychologist Tom Stafford from the University of Sheffield who says it\u2019s because writing \u201cis a very high level task,\u201d and our brains focus on creating meaning and conveying complex ideas, not dealing with more mundane things. Homonyms and spelling being two. (I\u2019ve noticed my alarming recent tendency to type even the most absurd homonym when I mean something entirely different\u2014the kind of error that makes me howl when I read it in print.) When we read our own stuff, we skip over these mistakes because we know what we mint.<\/p>\n

Touch typing was one of the most useful high school courses I took\u2014that and driver\u2019s ed\u2014and I have always made certain errors, typing \u201cd\u201d when I mean \u201ck,\u201d and vice-versa. Or, when I type \u201cBethesda,\u201d it takes real effort to stop myself from adding a \u201cy\u201d at the end. What I\u2019ve noticed is that those mechanical errors are now so embedded that I make them even when I\u2019m writing longhand. I go through two or three envelopes to get a birthday card out to any of my Bethesday friends.<\/p>\n

And let\u2019s not even start talking about numbers. Hopeless. I almost never enter a whole phone number without transposing something. I am a person for whom speed-dial is a godsend. The only thing that prevents matters from being much worse is that, as Stockton reports, \u201cproofreading requires you to trick your brain into pretending that it\u2019s reading the thing for the first time.\u201d That\u2019s where my vanishing attention span is a big plus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My second novel. 78,000 words. Respectable length, not one that would panic an agent or publisher. (Unless you\u2019re Stephen King or Dona Tartt, forget the 700-page doorstops. ) I\u2019ve read all the advice to new writers: get an editor (I\u2019ve … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Your Brain Has Priorities","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[104,51,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-morgue","category-words","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-X1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3659"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3660,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659\/revisions\/3660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}