More (Hopefully) Amusing Mistakes

Going through my file of mistakes that made me laugh is not an extremely productive use of my time, but it sure is fun. Here are a few more.

　

(Oh, and the ebook of Circuits & Slippers is on sale this weekend for only 99 cents! That's around 5 cents a story!)

　

This feeling of hope momentarily fluttered in her soul before dying a sudden and tragic death when the heavy double doors of the cafeteria opened with a loud, gunshot-like clang. (Many things in this world go "clang." Guns are not one of them.)

"You know that bumper sticker that says 'Friends help you move; real friends help you move bodies'? Well," Vanessa said cheerfully, "I think I may have developed a test to see how good of a kitty you are." (But she isn't a kitty!)

"I could lick it or keep it." (Or the real phrase, Take it or leave it.)

I went into a dead flop of limpness.

"So you ned a job," Ned said thoughtfully (Ned often talks about himself.)

I didn’t want to live in a VAN down by the RIVER, but yelling at me and breaking my ccooffee table wasn’t exactly the best way to motivate me. (this is the part of the story where my characters started randomly quoting Chris Farley sketches. I'm not joking.)

I screamed like a little girl again and flew down the hill like a thing that flies quickly.

That made perfect sense now that I understtood it

sheep lambs (To differentiate them from cow lambs, I presume?)

Amusing Writing Mistakes

I believe I promised to post some funny mistakes I've made during writing, and since I'm still busy writing a page every time I use the computer (haven't missed one yet!), this will make for a quick and easy post.

Some of these happened because I was writing too fast (or, during Nanowrimo, trying to catch up to the day's wordcount), others because autocorrect wanted to help, and some are the result of my brain just spitting out the completely wrong word at the wrong time. My favorites are when I try to do a metaphor and forget where I was going halfway through the sentence.


he stared deadly at the man

Nohing in life is to be feared; it is to be understood. Now is the time to fear more so that we may fear less.

A looming shadow loomed

At this point I felt the dramatic conclusion would be to profess my love for him and kiss him like married people do. (this is why I don't write romance.)

This claim hit me like a sack of bricks thrown by a proficient thrower of brick sacks

The field lay strewn with dozens of dead little goats which had once been live little goats full of little goat dreams. Now they were little more than rutabagas in waiting. (I couldn't think of the word "fertilizer," so I wrote "rutabagas" instead.)

I bent down to examine the body of a caramel-colored mare or doe or... goat bitch. To be honest, I grew up on a corn farm, so there wasn't really any male/female terminology involved there. It was a lady goat with two lady goat boobies, and that was good enough for me.

I struck my most authoritative pose and flashed my badger. (I meant "badge.")

She set the body on a sliding thing and slid him into the freezer like a Flintstone push-up pop (I really don't know how a coroner's office works.)

It was a cool day in November. Except in December. I was right the first time; it was November.

I wanted so badly to open my eyes closed

if there had been a silence, I wouldn't have been able to hear it

Nanowrimo

Nanowrimo is a yearly challenge to write 50,000 words during November, or about 1,667 words a day.

The past four years, I've done just that. And it's fun. The end result is nowhere near a finished or polished novel, and more often than not the act of writing quickly results in a lot of - sometimes hilarious - typos and plot holes (Sometime I'll go through my document of mistakes and post some here. Off the top of my head, last year I had a character claim the best way to kill a zombie was to throw a turtle at it, because I put a turtle in the scene and couldn't think of a reason for him to be there).

I'm not doing Nanowrimo this year.

In the past, it fit perfectly well with my ADHD brain that didn't care if the plot changed halfway through because I'm never getting published and it doesn't matter and depression and anxiety and boredom! But now I like taking my time to actually plot and get to know the characters. I know Nanowrimo helps a lot of people with their first draft, but I only end up with an amusing mess that I never want to edit.

I'm missing the craziness of it, but I'm still challenging myself. Every time I get on the computer, I have to write one page. Novel, short story, doesn't matter.

It's day 7. So far, so good. I don't know exactly how many pages I've written (and just to clarify, what I'm calling a page is one screen on Wordpad, 11 point font, single spaced). But I've written 3 short stories, 2 of them are actually pretty good and one that needs work, and worked on my novels (Yes, plural. I love to multitask).

On busy days, I don't need to worry that I'm not meeting the same wordcount as on days where I'm home all day. (Although in the past two days, I've written a 3,000 word story so I probably am getting around 1,667 a day. But it isn't nearly as stressful.)

So. That's what I'm doing this month. Yay.

(I really need to get better at ending posts. :D Maybe I need a tagline or a catchphrase or something.)

IWSG: My Favorite Aspect of Being a Writer

On the first Wednesday of every month, the Insecure Writer’s Support Group encourages writers to talk about their insecurities.

 

 

Each month, they also have an optional question to answer. This month it's What is your favorite aspect of being a writer?

 

I just love writing.

I have ADHD, OCD, and a bunch of other disorders that are also words you try to make when the Scrabble board is mostly full. So I have chaos in my head, and writing gets a little bit of that out and allows me to function as the amusing nerd I am.

Beyond that, it's just unbelievably fun. I mean, the editing and querying and stuff isn't, but discovering wacky characters and helping them tell their stories? That's the best thing ever.

(Except maybe dogs dressed as dinosaurs.)

But since Circuits & Slippers was published, I've found a new thing I like about writing. Other writers.

I don't like people. I'm happiest when I don't have friends and I have been known to hide from my neighbors. So I was reluctant to do any sort of social media, but Twitter seemed acceptable to me because it's just: write a short funny thing, other people can like it if they want, you do the same for them. It's barely social.

But then I was chosen for the anthology, and was automatically part of a group. We weren't forced to interact or anything and I know a few of them knew each other before, but I guess there's probably some psychological thing that makes people in a group want to interact.

We would post about the book, talk about each other's stories. If they tweeted something about their cat, I'd sometimes reply with something about mine. Some of us have talked about our love for obscure movies and Doctor Who. I drew this doodle for our editor because we both like sea creatures and dumb puns:

And then I realized I might be making friends. And that's weird for me.

My default setting in life is "amuse other people so they won't ask me to go away." It isn't a choice I make or anything, but in just about every social situation, my only goal becomes the other person laugh before they realize I'm an anxious mess who doesn't want to talk to them.

Now I'm slightly less anxious and I kind of enjoy talking with some people, and I don't know how to do it.

I've never been great at having friends, especially in real life. How much interaction is too much? Too little? Do people really like my dumb jokes or are they just too nice to tell me I'm annoying? What do they want for their birthday! (Luckily the Internet eliminates many of those pesky real life problems since we don't actually know each other and I'm not asking them to hang out with me when they have other things to do - and when in doubt, send them a picture of a dog dressed as a dinosaur.)

But I'm excited, because the fact that I'm not quitting Twitter the instant people want to interact with me must be a good sign. Of what, I don't know. But it's a good thing.

So I'll end this post with another dumb little doodle pun. It's a nerdy and obsccure one, requiring you to know about the microscopic creature called a tardigrade, and that the TARDIS is the blue police box from Doctor Who.

 

 

 

Yes, folks, it's a TARDISgrade.