As you will recall from yesterday’s post, I was supposed to write about my resolutions but I ended up doing a shameless plug for my book instead. And look — I just did it again! Shame, Michelle. Shame.
Anyway, I really do want to share my resolutions, because I’m pretty sure they’ll never happen if I don’t get them written down somewhere that I can’t retract them without attracting public ridicule. Therefore, my 2013 Resolutions:
- Stop eating dairy. I don’t actually know if it’s the cause of my poor stomach hurting, but it seems as likely a culprit as any. So goodbye to pizza, ice cream, cheese, and assorted dairy goodness, and hello to … soy? I’m regretting this already …
- Exercise daily. I keep reading all these articles about how our sedentary lifestyle is killing us, and it freaks me out. Therefore I resolve to get up and move every day, even if it’s just having a dance party whenever a good song comes on the radio.
- Write daily. Okay, everyone and their mother has this resolution (assuming their mother is a writer). But I’ve been really bad about this over the last few months because I’ve been focusing on getting Imminent Danger published and working on my blog. Bad Michelle! So now I have to write every day whether I have time for it or not.
That’s probably enough, right? Three is manageable. If I add any more, I’m just going to get confused. And believe me, I confuse easily.
Tragic Imminent Danger Update:
Mother is going through the final proof of the book to make sure there aren’t any typos. Then she found this sentence:
“He was taking them to Alpha Centauri to sell them to a faceless megacorporation, and there was precious little they could do to about it.”
Did you catch the typo? The copy-editor didn’t. I didn’t. But mother did, so now I’m worried about all the other little typos I didn’t catch. For that matter, why didn’t Word Spell Check catch that? Le sigh.
Related link of the day (for East-coasters):
Writer’s Digest Conference East (New York: April 5-7)
Unrelated image of the day:
Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/91XAS
Michelle Proulx - Author 
Oh, Michelle, I just re-uploaded due to errors that didn’t get caught by three sets of eyes, including an editor and multiple proofreads. It’s so frustrating. I wonder how many eyes are enough.
Nice resolutions. I struggle with the exercise part. A well-known weight loss program says to get up for at least five minutes every hour. I started out doing this, but then I forgot. *eye roll* Today I shall try to remember. How about you? it’s a start, right? Happy New Year!
Typos are the worst!
Yeah, my plan is to set a timer on my computer to go off every hour. That way I’ll be so annoyed by the BEEP BEEP BEEP that I’ll have to run out of the room — and therefore get my exercise! Mwahahaha.
Argh. Sorry to hear about the typo-thing. It happens to everyone, but that’s no consolation when one is staring you in the face. If it helps, the day I submitted my doctoral thesis for examination I noticed a glaring, horrendous, neon-flashing spelling mistake on the first page. The *first* page. I’d read it at least ten billion times, and never spotted it until it was too late. Plus, I pride myself on my spelling, so the blow to my ego was considerable.
But it’s all good. My examiner didn’t notice it, either. I had to point it out in my oral examination, and we all had a good laugh over it. 😀 Maybe you’ll get lucky, too.
P.S. Good luck with the resolutions!
Oh no!!! And it just HAD to be the first page, right? It’s crazy how we can read something so many times and not notice errors until it’s crunch time. I once submitted an essay, and noticed as I was handing it in that I’d center-justified the first paragraph. Sigh.
Take a deep breath then realize that even professionally-published books go out with typos. (I can name one off the top of my head in a Harry Potter book.) That’s what second editions are for.
As many times as I combed through my novel (I had at least 10 front-to-back edits and proofreads), my mother still noticed some missing words (those are the hardest of all to catch because your brain reads chunks of words at a time and it will automatically fill in missing words, especially if they’re small). I hope to release a second edition of my book next year with typo corrections.
Oh, and if you have gut problems, you might try chatting on this forum: http://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=26
I got a lot of help from the people there. They know more about gut problems than most doctors, outside of G. I.s And they probably know more than some of them.
I’ve never tried a health forum before … perhaps it’s time to give it a try. Thanks for the link 🙂
One typo isn’t so bad, right? Although she’s only 20% of the way through the book, so god knows what else she’ll find. Still … fingers crossed! And you’re right, typos aren’t the end of the world. I personally would just leave it as is, but my mother is a slight perfectionist and she will physically restrain me if I try to publish a book with errors in it. Lol.
Proofreading is the pits. I dream of a world were every writer had a team of editors to take care of all that stuff for them. I know it’s silly but I want it just the same.
Well, you get a team of editors if you’re a fancy, famous published author. If only my name were JK Rowling …
Guess I’ll go borrow some from Stephanie Meyer. I figure since her fans don’t mind bad writing, they won’t mind a few typos.
Ha! Burn.
now that made me laugh!
It took me three reads to catch it.
That picture rocks. I don’t know why, but it does. 🙂
Your eyes just skim over it, right? I kind of wish my mom hadn’t caught it, lol. Although better we catch it now than after the book goes to print.
And the picture totally rocks. Anything with Darth Vader is bound to be awesome.
I laughed my socks off when I saw that pic. 😀
LOVED IT!!
Now, where are my socks..?
Oh…and I just noticed what the polo ball is… duh!
Errors in combinations of “to” “so” and “do” are amongst the hardest to catch, in my professional experience. I’m reminded every month when I get my my audit report at work (cripes, even editors have editors).
I imagine it’s because they are tiny filler words that we just skim over when reading? I had a friend over last night and told him to read the sentence aloud. When he read it, he skipped straight over the “to” as if it weren’t even there. Craziness.
Ah, those little typos that can slip past so many eyes. There’s one in my book that I (despite going through my manuscript zillions of times), my editor, and senior editor didn’t catch. My only defense is that it’s at the final climax of the book, and we were thus caught up in the story. Now I know to read my work backwards so I don’t let that happen again. 🙂
I applaud your resolutions, especially that second one. Good luck!
I figure that if I don’t catch the typos, most people won’t either. Then, of course, my mother had to go and catch said typo, crushing my dreams to dust.
But definitely yes to the reading backwards thing. It’s so useful — plus you get to see your story from a totally different perspective, which can be both fun and enlightening.
Exercise is going … mediocre so far. I walked to the store! Does that count?
Sure it does! 🙂
Oh my! I definitely need one of those light saber polo mallets. good luck on your 2013 resolutions – Pizza and Ice Cream pretty much sums up every meal I eat every day, so there’s no way I could do that.
I’ve thought about getting cheese-less pizza and gelato … but it just isn’t the same …
Gelato, while definitely different, is pretty good too. But, yeah, cheese-less Pizza? That’s just wrong. Better to go without completely I guess. Hopefully abstaining from the dairy will work out for you!
I don’t think I can ever stop eating dairy, and I’m actually pretty sure it’s the cause of my stomach problems. I just love cheese way too much.
Typos are easy to miss, so don’t fret! I was mortified the other day when one reader mentioned that I’d written “nut” instead of “but” at one point, haha.
Lol! I love how utterly useless Word spell check is. Sometimes I wonder why I bother to use it at all. It catches maybe 20% of the typos.
I recently read an eBook where a character ‘thoughtfully stroked his goatee bread…’
…
What sort of flour would you use to make that?
Chestnut flour! (because hair can be chestnut coloured …)
Good luck with your resolutions honey )
Eeek! Thank heavens your mum noticed it….hope it’s not too late to alter it xx
It’s not too late, thank goodness. Now I just have to wait for her to finish reading the rest and make sure there aren’t any more typos. :S
Good old mums eh 😉
Xx
*Love* that image. I need to steal it and send it to a friend who will greatly appreciate it. Every time I look at it, I giggle.
Anyhow, the typo . . . ah, yes. Every time I look at my ms it seems I come across something and I think, “Argh! How could we all have missed that?!!?” But, it happens. As long as it happens few and far between, I’m hoping readers will forgive us. 🙂
I actually love finding a typo in published books. It reminds me that everyone is fallible, even the almighty publishing houses. And it kind of makes me feel like I’ve beat the system by catching something that they couldn’t 😀
Of course, a whole whack of typos is a different story. My book doesn’t have that problem, thank goodness, but I would rather avoid typos if at all possible. Still, I’m sure at least one or two will sneak through despite my best efforts.
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