Image by Jenny. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenny_twum/

I was reading a book the other day … a highly educated, informative tome with dozens of pages of footnotes and an index as long as your arm. It was written, needless to say, by a well-educated person, published by a well-known publishing house and, no doubt, read over by many a skilled and critical eye for typos and errors.

However, it’s a fact of life, though, that errors slip into even the most carefully produced books.

In this case, it was the “yolk of oppression.”

Instead of the bright yellow center of an egg, the author meant the wooden yoke that harness oxen and other animals to carts, plows and other labor-intensive vehicles.

But there it was, glaring as bright as ever a sunny-side up shone from a dish.

Do I think that the author didn’t know the right word? Of course not.
Do I think he mistyped it? Possibly, or it could have been the type-setter, or any person along the line who made a small little goof. I don’t doubt that the people involvedwere well-trained and attentive to their work, but this was a big project. Huge, in fact. The book is 688 pages (including the back matter). One or two small errors are bound to happen. In cases like these, you more or less just hope that they’re small ones.

The thing that worries me, though, is not that mistakes happen, but that we’ve become so oblivious to them. And, worse, that they happen so often … careless mistakes, misspellings, slips of the fingers, momentary brain-freezes … that we start expecting them.

I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeon, but it’s a rare day that I don’t see someone making stupid mistakes when they write. (Sometimes it’s me.) Tweets, message boards, blog posts, emails … But it’s one thing when somebody in a rush types “then it’s leg broke” when describing the titanic crash their curio cabinet made after their bloodhound tried to chase the cat over the top. They got caught up in the story, it happens.

It’s a different matter when you stumble across these kind of mistakes in “formal” media like newspapers, magazines, and books. Headlines, for example. Titles on published books. Billboards. You know, places where professional people put together something for the public to see and made a stupid, glaring mistake.

Mistyping “yoke” for “yolk” is minor. Yes, it caught my eye, but I remembered it mostly because of the humor–the mental image of an angry egg cracking a whip over a group of oppressed people. I’m honestly not holding it against the author or publisher (which is why I’m not publicly outing them).

What worries me, though, is that the more we grant free passes for honest mistakes like these, the more we shrug off the they’re/there/their mistakes and people confusing your for you’re, it means the more we’re simply accepting the new, lowest common denominator.

I realize this makes me sound like a crank with nothing better to worry about. There are wars and famine, disease and despair rampant out there in the world, and I’m worrying about typos?

Except… if we can’t be bothered to look after the little details, how can we be sure that we’re looking after the big ones? How can we be sure that society isn’t being as cavalier about the Big Issues that really do come down to life and death when they regularly disregard the simple, little things like spelling, punctuation and saying “thank you?”

Life is made up of small moments and minor details that add up to a life lived with grace and strength as opposed to one that’s careless and slovenly. You don’t need an immaculate home to be a good, worthy, wonderful person. You might even excuse the mess by saying you’ve been too busy saving the spotted owl and trying to solve the problem of world hunger … you’re focusing on bigger things.

But, when you’ve got a potential donor, or client, or anybody you want to impress at all, appearances matter.

You might not think that one, little typo is the end of the world (and I agree), but stop and ask yourself if it was an honest mistake or something that slipped through because you just didn’t care. The answer can make all the difference between a simple, legitimate mistake and the beginning of a slippery slope covered in eggshells and albumen because we were too darn lazy to clean up the yolks when we dropped the first egg.

I liked this offer from TIME magazine. First, it’s simple. No crazy bells and whistles, things I need to check or fold or tweak or poke or circle or tear. Okay, the reply portion is the bottom third of the letter and needs to be torn off, but that barely counts.

The letter starts simply. It tells me this is a “Guaranteed Savings Offer” and immediately follows by telling me what the cover price would be, what I’m saving, and what I need to pay for this offer–and a year’s subscription to TIME for $20.00 puts this at about the same price range as a newspaper. A very tempting offer.

The middle section spells out details like the rate and some of the special features that come with a subscription, like the TIME Person of the year issue, and what TIME magazine offers. (“Latest developments in health and medicine.” “Comprehensive coverage of world news and politics.”)

Let’s not forget the special premium offer–a laser level, free with my paid order. It’s a good premium, I suppose. Everybody has pictures to hang now and again, though I don’t quite see what it has to do with TIME.

The reply portion is simple to read, easy to figure out. It offers a check-box where I can request my special laser level premium. It also spells out in bold–in case I missed it earlier–that if I pay up front, I can  save another $5 and get the year’s subscription for only $15. I have to admit, that’s an impressive price for 56 issues of just about anything.

There’s a website I can use to subcribe, too, which is something else I appreciate. Not everybody likes snail mail.

All in all? I liked this mailing. It didn’t try to “sell” me on anything. It just laid out the facts, it kept it simple, and it had a tempting offer.

In fact, I took them up on this one. Come to think of it though, it’s been over a month, and I haven’t received that level yet…

Okay, not really. I’m exaggerating. I AM a writer. I enjoy it, I’m good at it, I even make some money from it, in the perfect blend of vocation, hobby, and inclination. I’m the first one to admit that the joy of easily flowing words is incomparable. That blissful state may not happen all that often, but when it does, it’s magic, and one that only another writer can truly appreciate. (You could make an argument for other creative folks, I suppose, but I’m telling this story.)

Anyway, there’s no question that I’m a writer and proud to be one. I can get as caught up in weaving my web of words as the next writer. I find myself drawn to my keyboard periodically through the day for no other reason than to tap out words for a story, an email, or a blog post.

But, my little, guilty secret is that, as much as I enjoy writing, I love reading more.

Reading was my very first addiction, and it’s still my strongest. I can forego chocolate. I can give up television or music. But books? The sheer pleasure of curling up with a good book–especially the rarest of rare things, a brand-new book by a favorite author? Nothing else compares. And with that kind of temptation, I am weak, weak, weak.

This was brought home to me this weekend when I did almost nothing but read.

This started Friday night after I got home from work … after I baked a lemon meringue pie and did all the supper-time kinds of things and checked email and did some knitting … after all the things that have to be done. I stayed up until 2:30 to finish the first book (Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s newest Liaden book Mouse and Dragon). The next morning, I started the next (Allison Winn Scotch’s new The One That I Want. I stopped reading for about five hours to celebrated my sister’s birthday and have a little nap, and then I finished that book and started the next (Joanne Harris’ Runemarks). That, I finished around lunch on Sunday, and since it reminded me of Diana Wynne Jones’ Eight Days of Luke, if only because of the Norse god similarities, I pulled that off the shelf and polished it off before supper. Then, because it’s a favorite, I took out Sean Russell’s Beneath the Vaulted Hills.

In just over two days, I read over 1,300 pages.

The thing that amazes me is how easy this is. Reading is my first love. Even when it’s a book I’ve read multiple times, I still get drawn in, still get caught up in what’s happening. Fiction or non-fiction doesn’t matter. Nor does time–I stayed up until 2:30 in the morning with no trouble whatsoever, simply because I wanted to know what happened next. I can spend an entire day doing nothing but read. In fact, curling up in a comfy chair with a book and a cup of tea is practically heaven–especially if my dog is sitting with me.)

I’ll confess, as much as I love writing … it doesn’t pull me in this strongly.

Does this worry me? Do I fret that I’ve missed my calling? That I should somehow have arranged a career that allowed me to read for a living?

No. And I’ll tell you why.

Most of the writers I know became writers because they loved reading.

There are some writers, of course, who write because it’s their job, or because they got into it from the marketing or business side. But most of the writers I know started off as kids with their noses stuck into books, just like me.

So many of us ARE readers, which is exactly what draws us to writing. We may have thought “I want to do that,” when we read a story we loved. We may have read something so appallingly bad we told ourselves, “I can do better than that.” We may have started writing down the stories we had in our heads simply because nobody else seemed to be telling the stories we really wanted.

Being a Reader first and a Writer second only makes me stronger as a writer.

Being an inquiring person, I’ll read almost anything that comes recommended highly enough. I have a wide variety of interests and like to know about things, or to be entertained in new and different ways. I read fiction and non-fiction; books and magazines; websites and blogs.

And–even without thinking about it consciously–this has made me a stronger writer.

By continually reading new things, meeting new ideas, discovering new authors, I have broadened my own horizons and at the same time have developed an eye and ear for “good” writing rather than “bad.” I can appreciate writing styles that are wonderful yet completely different than my own. I can pour withering scorn over the styles that are out-right bad. But … most importantly … I am keeping my love of writing alive by feeding it good things to read.

Like any other skill or talent, writing demands nourishment.

There are writers out there … writers of all types, writing marketing pieces or cookie-cutter novels … who basically write the same thing over and over and over again. I was watching the wonderful “Jeeves and Wooster” series with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry the other night, and in one episode, one of Bertie’s friends is reading a series of novels to his uncle to soften him up to the idea of him marrying a waitress. Every time the camera stops by Bingo and his uncle, you hear “Scornfully she tossed her black/blond/red curls as, eyes snapping, she replied…” The hair color changed from book to book, but the sentence remained the same. Every time.

Now, Bingo’s uncle enjoyed them, and all, but obviously this writer wasn’t doing a damn thing to expand her writerly horizons. She just stuck to what she knew and left it at that. My guess is that, after publishing her first book, she never picked up another book that wasn’t her own again. She never primed the pump or did anything to try to improve or do more. Nothing to generate new ideas.

My contention is that, while curling up with a book or four over the course of a weekend may not seem immediately productive … and I admit that it doesn’t … in fact, it serves a dual purpose. Not only does it give the Reader Me a relaxing visit with somebody else’s words and story for a change, but it reminds the Writer Me that new and different are good, possible, inspiring, and downright fun.

It’s all too easy to get caught in a rut. especially when things are going well, but you owe it to yourself to let that conscious mind relax once in a while while you pull out some fresh flavors, some new ingredients and let it all stew in the background with a dash of inspiration. You never know what might grow out of it.

I’ve recently turned my attention to an old manuscript of mine. It’s been sitting on the hard-drive of the last several computers I’ve had, minding its own business, being patient.

It’s the first novel I ever wrote, and while I sent it out numerous times, I wasn’t able to find an agent for it, got discouraged, and tucked it away to focus on other things.

But I figured it was time to give it another look.

The idea is simple—I rewrote the story of Cinderella, but I gave the stepmother and stepsisters a fair break. I also didn’t stop at the usual, prince-finds-the-girl spot, but used that as my half-way point. Haven’t you always wondered how he brought home a girl with dishpan-hands to be the next queen?

Well, I have to say, re-reading this recently, I’ve come to a couple conclusions.

• My writing has improved. The writing from ten years ago isn’t dreadful, but my writing now is better, tighter. (Knowing my tendencies towards wordiness, this is a shock to me, too.) It’s just good to know that, even if I haven’t noticed it, improvement has happened.
• A good story can transcend less-than-perfect writing. Reading this again, I am as enchanted by the story I put together as I was when I wrote it. It doesn’t matter that the writing isn’t always perfect, I enjoyed reading it and rediscovering the story.
• Write what you love. I’ve said for years that the reason I wrote this book in the first place was because it was a story I wanted to read and nobody else had written it yet … so I did. And, still, I would plunk my money down for this book in a heartbeat if I came across it in a store.
• Editing older work is easier than newer writing. Once a manuscript (or blog post, or article) has marinated for a while, it’s not as painful cutting or changing things. Gaining a little distance make it easier to be impartial, easier to make the changes that have to be made without sentiment barring the way. I removed entire chapters, and cut out over 30,000 words. (Yes, I know. I don’t know what I was thinking, that my YA manuscript was 121,000 words, but now it’s a comparatively trim 86,000. And the chapters I ruthlessly cut? Well, I kept copies, for old times’ sake.)
• Patting yourself on the back is healthy. Because, yes, there were some chapters that I read with a smile on my face because I was so darn happy with the way they came out and how well they’ve held up.

All in all, letting this manuscript rest all these years worked well for me. Re-reading it now is like moving back to an old home that I loved—all the fond memories, but I get to give it a complete makeover to bring it up to date.