Day Eight and the Sad Typo Club

Yesterday, being the Tuesday after the Monday that followed the Sunday that brought back another vastly under-appreciated time change, I felt the usual, annual letdown that tends to hit, one week into November Blog Month.  So with that, yesterday I decided to pull something out of the unreleased archives file.  A poem, already written, waiting its turn for publication, or maybe even already submitted for publication and rejected, because, for a poet, to be rejected is just any day that ends in, well… D-A-Y.

Laptop open, a couple of clicks later, and I’m looking at specific poems written after my move to New York, between the summer of ’22 and the summer of ’23.  And with a keen eye, sharpened by months of doing other things, I saw clearly, for the first time, exactly why, if I was in charge of reviewing submissions for publication, my writing was rejected.

TYPOS.

I may not understand every nuance of the word “irony”, but I sure as hell know how to type it WITHOUT spellcheck.

(checks spelling)

Yeah, irony.

Also yesterday, two writers I know well, actual friends, both dealt with the subject of TYPOS, one in an Instagram Story, the other in a post on Substack.  Each bemoaning, and rightly so, the accidental OOPS that happens when writers, or in their cases, EDITORS of writers, get bitten by that pesky typo bug.  One of them even had a typo in their post about typos!

I smiled, I laughed, I even pointed out the typo for the one… because I too have been an editor, and then got on with the day’s business of dragging a poem of mine into the light of day for others to read and maybe enjoy.  Until I realized that even in mine, there were typos everywhere. 

So, a few deep breaths and another cup of afternoon coffee later, I spent an hour editing a less-than-forty word poem into something that had a heart, a soul, and no nasty punctuation or spelling errors.

That I know of.

And I hope you liked that one, the way I hope you tolerate this one.  Also, I hope that The Sad Typo Club has taught me what I need to know for the future.  For the next three weeks of blogging, and anything else that wants to call itself “writing” in my foreseeable future. 

A future that’s not been written.

Yet.