Did you ever have the experience in school when students in the class read aloud, and someone said the wrong word? I remember this happening quite a bit when I was young. At the time, I found it odd. The words weren’t complicated or hard to read, but several of my peers and even myself made simple mistakes. “The” instead of “a.” Saying the wrong name for a character. Pronouncing the wrong form of a word (i.e. read (reed) or read (red)).
When I was in college, I learned what actually causes this to happen. Miscues.
I did a project for one of my English classes, and I learned some things that still resonate with me.
Our brains are programmed as they are exposed to different stimuli. The books we read, the words we hear, the words we say, etc. Our brains are brilliant computers that take in all that data and formulate conclusions based on the patterns they find.
When little Timmy says, “The big dog ran” when the book actually says, “A big dog runs,” it is NOT because Timmy doesn’t know how to read or isn’t paying attention. It’s because his brain assumes that is what it says based on its experiences, and it sends that message to his mouth.
Boom. Mind blowing, right? Perhaps not for you, but that was impactful for me as a fresh-faced college student. Since then, I’ve seen it countless times in my students and in my editing.
This is why even the most well-educated, intelligent, experienced writers end up with typos, word-choice or other errors in their manuscripts. It’s because their brain tells them that the words say what they think they say. When you are the one who wrote it, your brain knows what it’s supposed to say, so it’s possible for you to genuinely not see the words as they are written and, therefore, miss those elements that ought to be fixed.
This is why we need fresh eyes on our work. Or, at the very least, why we need to self-edit differently so we can catch such mistakes.
In my next post, I’m going to let you in on some of my favorite self-editing secrets. I used them when I worked as a student editor. I had to read and edit the same pieces again and again and again as they went through different revisions and received input from different people in different departments. My brain would rebel against me. If it could have spoken, it would have said, “Nope. No way. I’ve already read this before. I’m not giving this any more of my time and attention.” I had to trick the darn thing into paying attention to the words, grammar, punctuation, etc. It was shocking the things I found when I edited something that had already been looked over by professors, my boss, myself, and other editors.
So, when you are writing, revising, and editing, please make sure you have a little grace for yourself when you miss something. For you self-published authors, don’t let it get to you if or when a reader gives you a poor review because of such errors. It’s not your fault! Your brain sabotaged you into thinking it said what it was supposed to say. (I guess, technically, it could be your fault, if you didn’t read it over. I don’t know your life. But assuming you went over it as painstakingly as I know many indie authors do… NOT YOUR FAULT!) I read a lot, and I find errors in nearly every book I read, indie- and traditionally-published.
Even the fancy-schmancy editors that work for publishing houses miss things. It doesn’t mean they aren’t good at what they do. It’s because their brains miscue as well.
Before you get down on yourself, just remember. It wasn’t you. It was the miscue. 😉
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