The first of what I’m sure will be many apologies about the poor quality of my written work.
08/12/10 17:01 Filed in: Non-fiction
I am Dyslexic: It’s not an excuse, but it is an explanation so please bear with me.
I learned to cope in various ways: I never write anything intended to be read by other human beings by hand, I got very good at dictating to people for writer exams at university, and I read at a normal or above normal speed by seeing words, not letters. When confronted by unfamiliar words I often fail to understand their pronunciation, I usually get their meaning from context or form breaking them down to either smaller words or Greek or Latin roots, but even after doing so I often have no clue exactly how they should sound. It happens very rarely now a days, as due to my time in archaeology I’ve picked up quite an extensive and specialised vocabulary (to the point were I can use the word “danzine” in normal conversation: I don’t because A, I like to pretend that I’m not a pretentious twat, and B, down that path only madness lies, you’ll start saying “phenomenology” to normal people without realising it at which point there’s noting left for it but to call in the nice men with the white suits and giant butterfly nets.). So when it comes to reading it’s no problem.
With writing, hoverer, it hurts. Having trained myself to see whole words and not the individual sub-units, I find it almost impossible to tell whether the word I have just written is the correct word, or a different word with a similar shape. I look, the word is the right shape, and because I’m the one that’s written it, I know what it should say and my mind fills in the gaps. If you’ve read anything I’ve ever written you’ll have realised by now that I am a martyr, if not to my own spelling errors, as my inability to spot spell-check substitution errors were the computer corrects a misspelled word into a word other than the one I was aiming for and I just don’t see it even on frequent re-readings.
So despite having carefully re-read all my Fanfic before I put it up yesterday, I only just spotted the fact that in chapter three Boneclaw says “thing” rather that “think” as I had intended. It says something for my obsessive weirdness that this simple fact made me want to cry (I didn’t of course, stiff upper lip and all that, but still). What’s worse is, as its rare for me to spot them, I know there must be others; feel free to throw things at me for assaulting the English language like this.
I could in theory solve this by getting someone else to proof-read my work, but there is a problem: both of my friends who usually proof-read my stuff have only just started reading Digger (mostly to stop me nagging them to) and so cannot be shown and Fanfic until after they have reached the point were the character of Bonecalw is introduced to avoid potential spoilers. That only leaves my parents as potential proof-readers, and given that they worry about my mental state as it is, showing them any of the writings that I actually spend a lot of my time producing seems to me the fastest possible way to win the coveted one-way first-class ticket to white suit and butterfly net central. TekServer from the Digger comments section has very kindly proof-read some bits for me, good chap that he is, but I feel guilty imposing on him and so will probably not ask him to proof-read agin (your free internet is in the post by the way Tek).
So sorry about the spelling.
There is also the fact that in my latest Fanfic Boneclaw comes across and a bit, well… “ladish”. Given she’s meant to be about 19 or whatever she species equivalent of 19 is, and socially dominant amongst her age group I based her character on social dominant people I knew when I was 19. Given she lives is a strictly matriarchal society and is a dominant female, I based her on an Alpha male type I knew in my first year at uni who was cocky, rude, crude, drunk too much and was one of the easiest to respect people I have ever know due to he sheer determination to stand up for his friends, the fact he never backed down from a fight, and his painfully old-fashioned and slightly chauvinistic desire to avenge any cruelty of slight to a woman made by a male in his presence, and a genuine goodness of sprit some underneath the crude jokes, larger and burning rage. This allows me to use her interactions with Owl-caller to satirise and examine traditional gender relationships, explore what goes on in the mind of a status-obsessed nineteen-year old struggling with behaving like an adult and doing the write ting, and of course, lets me make lots of stupid ladish jokes. It went without saying that Boneclaw aged 19 would be based on am mix of him and a young Gryta Ogg. Sorry if my depiction does not live up to your expectations. (Dammit Jim!) I'm an idiot fanboy, not a pro-writer, so what did you expect?
Likewise, my depiction of Bloodmare is based on an actuall person. Not that I’m bitter or anything.
You may have also noticed that I’ve tried to set up a Gravitar comments section. I have no clue if it will work or not: I read the help section of the Gravitar website, and took a look at the source-code for the Gravitar section on the Digger page to give me a clue as to how it should look, but I’ve still never done anything like this before, so if you comments randomly get translated into Korean or wombatese, or, given how I based it on the comments section on Digger, if it posts your comments there and not on this site, or the comment just never happens, then we’ll just chalk that up to a teething problem in my coding career and I’ll just take the comments section offline and then go and not-cry-in-a-manly-way somewhere....
HALF AN HOUR LATER
... Nope, that dosn't work (zee comments! Zhey do NOTHING!). Back to the drawing board....
I learned to cope in various ways: I never write anything intended to be read by other human beings by hand, I got very good at dictating to people for writer exams at university, and I read at a normal or above normal speed by seeing words, not letters. When confronted by unfamiliar words I often fail to understand their pronunciation, I usually get their meaning from context or form breaking them down to either smaller words or Greek or Latin roots, but even after doing so I often have no clue exactly how they should sound. It happens very rarely now a days, as due to my time in archaeology I’ve picked up quite an extensive and specialised vocabulary (to the point were I can use the word “danzine” in normal conversation: I don’t because A, I like to pretend that I’m not a pretentious twat, and B, down that path only madness lies, you’ll start saying “phenomenology” to normal people without realising it at which point there’s noting left for it but to call in the nice men with the white suits and giant butterfly nets.). So when it comes to reading it’s no problem.
With writing, hoverer, it hurts. Having trained myself to see whole words and not the individual sub-units, I find it almost impossible to tell whether the word I have just written is the correct word, or a different word with a similar shape. I look, the word is the right shape, and because I’m the one that’s written it, I know what it should say and my mind fills in the gaps. If you’ve read anything I’ve ever written you’ll have realised by now that I am a martyr, if not to my own spelling errors, as my inability to spot spell-check substitution errors were the computer corrects a misspelled word into a word other than the one I was aiming for and I just don’t see it even on frequent re-readings.
So despite having carefully re-read all my Fanfic before I put it up yesterday, I only just spotted the fact that in chapter three Boneclaw says “thing” rather that “think” as I had intended. It says something for my obsessive weirdness that this simple fact made me want to cry (I didn’t of course, stiff upper lip and all that, but still). What’s worse is, as its rare for me to spot them, I know there must be others; feel free to throw things at me for assaulting the English language like this.
I could in theory solve this by getting someone else to proof-read my work, but there is a problem: both of my friends who usually proof-read my stuff have only just started reading Digger (mostly to stop me nagging them to) and so cannot be shown and Fanfic until after they have reached the point were the character of Bonecalw is introduced to avoid potential spoilers. That only leaves my parents as potential proof-readers, and given that they worry about my mental state as it is, showing them any of the writings that I actually spend a lot of my time producing seems to me the fastest possible way to win the coveted one-way first-class ticket to white suit and butterfly net central. TekServer from the Digger comments section has very kindly proof-read some bits for me, good chap that he is, but I feel guilty imposing on him and so will probably not ask him to proof-read agin (your free internet is in the post by the way Tek).
So sorry about the spelling.
There is also the fact that in my latest Fanfic Boneclaw comes across and a bit, well… “ladish”. Given she’s meant to be about 19 or whatever she species equivalent of 19 is, and socially dominant amongst her age group I based her character on social dominant people I knew when I was 19. Given she lives is a strictly matriarchal society and is a dominant female, I based her on an Alpha male type I knew in my first year at uni who was cocky, rude, crude, drunk too much and was one of the easiest to respect people I have ever know due to he sheer determination to stand up for his friends, the fact he never backed down from a fight, and his painfully old-fashioned and slightly chauvinistic desire to avenge any cruelty of slight to a woman made by a male in his presence, and a genuine goodness of sprit some underneath the crude jokes, larger and burning rage. This allows me to use her interactions with Owl-caller to satirise and examine traditional gender relationships, explore what goes on in the mind of a status-obsessed nineteen-year old struggling with behaving like an adult and doing the write ting, and of course, lets me make lots of stupid ladish jokes. It went without saying that Boneclaw aged 19 would be based on am mix of him and a young Gryta Ogg. Sorry if my depiction does not live up to your expectations. (Dammit Jim!) I'm an idiot fanboy, not a pro-writer, so what did you expect?
Likewise, my depiction of Bloodmare is based on an actuall person. Not that I’m bitter or anything.
You may have also noticed that I’ve tried to set up a Gravitar comments section. I have no clue if it will work or not: I read the help section of the Gravitar website, and took a look at the source-code for the Gravitar section on the Digger page to give me a clue as to how it should look, but I’ve still never done anything like this before, so if you comments randomly get translated into Korean or wombatese, or, given how I based it on the comments section on Digger, if it posts your comments there and not on this site, or the comment just never happens, then we’ll just chalk that up to a teething problem in my coding career and I’ll just take the comments section offline and then go and not-cry-in-a-manly-way somewhere....
HALF AN HOUR LATER
... Nope, that dosn't work (zee comments! Zhey do NOTHING!). Back to the drawing board....