Sunday, March 30, 2008

Spellchecker!

What's the most amount of pages that you've gone before you ran your spellchecker?
I went 144 pages - what a mess!
Actually, I haven't even reread any of it since about page 20!

I already know there are huge chunks to be moved and removed. I'll have to very carefully outline and document the changes that I make especially given so much time elapses between writing sessions.

6 comments:

Carole McDonnell said...

I'm a bit lazy about running my spellchecker. What i did was: once I determined (through the spellcheck) my habitually typos -- lazy lefty pinkie that makes me double certain letters (eeye), the tendency to type ; instead of ' in contractions such as didn't; the tendency to rest on the first letter (as in h aven't); words I tend to always mis-spell THEN I set up my spell-checker to automatically repair those errors as I go. It saves me a lot of time and helps me to live in the delusion that I have wonderful typing skills.

Lisa said...

Thanks, you made me laugh. I feel silly! Never dawned on me to adjust my spellchecker to be smarter about catching errors. sigh . . .
speaking of which, have you found that when speaking, you still say the word 'sigh' rather than actually sigh?

Carole McDonnell said...

Hi Lisa:

Trust me...it saves sooo much time. All those i before e issues, all those "ing" words that I mess up. All those weird character names that my spell-check program highlights! Fixed without an intervention from me.

Actually my sigh problem is a bit different than yours. (I suspect the sigh disease can manifest itself in many ways with different authors.) My particular sigh illness is that my characters are always sighing. My critters and editor have sighed more than once at seeing them. "Carole, find some other thing for your characters to do." I'd sooner trade saying "sigh" in regular conversations than writing them in literary conversations. "Sigh" is such a wonderful word, though. -C

Kristy Baxter said...

Thanks for stopping by my blog, Lisa! DC was awesome, I've been meaning to blog about it and post some pics but the past week has been insane.

I leave the spellchecker on, because I'm a bit obsessive and, if there's a mistake, I want to know RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW. Of course, there are always the things the spellchecker doesn't catch...which I will hunt and execute during later. I'll get them...oh yes, I will...=)

Anissa said...

I have Word set to let me know immediately if there's an issue. That beastly red squiggle always puts me in my place. Then again, half the time the program corrects my spelling for me. Lovely thing. :)

Thanks for stopping by my blog. As for those Thin Mints...they're the devil's cookie. Out of the house with you!!! I sent mine to work with the hubby. Chocolate crack, I'm telling you.

Lisa said...

I use OpenOffice for my initial drafts and I do get swiggle lines but I often plug through and think that I'll do it later. Well later was 5 months and 144 pages!
I really want thin mints.