Writing Mistakes I've Made @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: Sometimes I feel like I must either know every detail of a real setting, or else make it up entirely. With either approach, I would be much less likely to make mistakes. But alas, that’s not the path I chose when I began writing the Key West mysteries. An early writing friend suggested after reading the first book that maybe I’d be better off using a fictional town so I wouldn’t have to worry about geographical or other errors. (In An Appetite for Murder, for one small example, Olivia St. goes in the wrong direction.) It’s not unusual for a restaurant that Hayley visits in one book to go out of business in real life. Sigh.

I was invited recently to a meeting of the Big Pine Key library book group—the members had all read the book and were ready to discuss. After a lot of friendly conversation, one man said, “we did wonder where you got the ravine.” This made me realize that on an island made of coral, the chances of finding the deep ravine that I described were pretty much zero. I explained that I needed that ravine for the story, and we had a good laugh. 

I won’t spoil it by telling you the details, but you will recognize them when you get there. Here’s what led up to the ravine scene:

“When the camp was cleared out not long after Veronica disappeared, you can imagine the trash that had been left behind. Everything those kids no longer needed they discarded as if the backcountry was a giant dump. Monroe County sent a front loader to scrape some of it into the ravine behind the camp and take the rest of it to the real dump on Stock Island. But that altar, it was back in the trees. I hadn’t remembered it until now.”

“You think it could actually still be there?”

“Could be,” he said, squinting his eyes at me.

My excitement was mounting. “Could you point me in the right direction so I could see if anything’s left?”

I’ve also made character mistakes, urging characters to make choices that really didn’t fit them or do them any favors. When people are about to start the first book in the series, I say in a breezy voice that they need to remember that Hayley Snow improves over the course of the series. That she is a little immature in the first book and makes some poor choices. But that will get better as it does for many of us as we grow up, and that’s one of my favorite parts of writing a long series!

What kinds of errors in books bother you, or are you happy to read past them?

Giveaway from Goodreads for THE MANGO MURDERS through the end of March. 

Also through the end of March, A POISONOUS PALATE ebook is on sale for $2.99. 

If you like to read and review on Netgalley, here’s the link. 

Miss Malaprop types again!

HALLIE: The other day I was typing a letter and at the end, I typed:
Beset,
Hallie

Such a great typo, because "beset" is what I truly feel, half the time. So not Zen.

Then, this morning I was writing a scene in my book and my character dropped her purse and "lounged for her lipstick" as it rolled away. Lounged for instead of lunged for. Another typo with great possibilities, possibly even a better verb.

Then, in "Never Tell a Lie" (thank you Hank for catching this one) I wrote: There were narrow aisles with housewares, mixing bowels and kitchen utensils and dish towels, alongside weed whackers and paint supplies. Bowels and towels. Maybe I was trying to rhyme?

Could be that it's genetic. My daughter tells me she wrote an entire paper about Janis Joplin's addiction to heroine. And then an essay on Savannah's pubic squares. She's also the one who, celebrating her first Passover in her own apartment, had her (Catholic) best friend hide the Kofi-annan instead of the Afikomen). Okay, you have to be Jewish to appreciate that.

Do you exhibit some creative unawareness, perhaps some Freudian insight in your typos?

RHYS: Remind me never to go to that store where they have the bowels and the kitchen utensils side by side. You have quite put me off my breakfast! I wonder if there is a Freudian side to typos? Mine are usually homonyms--there for their etc--because my brain has rushed on ahead and left my fingers to themselves. Sometimes it's just my bad spelling. I was a terrible speller as a child, unlike my best friend, who had been to a school where they got one hit with the cane for every spelling word they got wrong. Consequently she was the best speller I have ever met. Modern educators take note??

RO: Now that I'm working on a mini (2-3 days a week) I have tons of typos because the keyboard is smaller than a standard size and my chubby little fingers are flying all over the place. I have to be super careful, otherwise my writing looks like pig latin (no wisecracks!!)
On a regular basis..I misspell my own name and type Rosemray.

HALLIE: I have a computer with one of those mini-keyboards. The only way I can get even close to correct spelling is to poke the keys, one-finger typing.

Just got an email from a panel moderator for an upcoming conference who began her message by addressing the panelists as "Kindley authors" instead of "kindly."

HANK: Are you sure that was a mistake?

ROBERTA: I'm trying to think of typos, but my mind seems to be a dead bank. (Hallie had to help me with that one.) My last name is a fallow field when it comes to typos...Isbeil, Isabub, even one day, a letter came addressed to Rupert Sleiba. Then one day in the newspaper that usually screwed everything up, it was spelled perfectly--the day I came in dead last in a golf tournament, with a very high, extremely embarrassing score. I-S-L-E-I-B. Sigh.

HALLIE: ACK! You're reminding me of when I was giving a talk with my then co-author and I got introduced as Nora Ephron and he got introduced as Peter Zak (our character).

HANK: I'm howeling (oops) with laughter. I mean--how do you gracefully correct something like that?

I'm also laughing because I'm right now in the midst of proofing the typeset pages for my dear AIR TIME (I'm in a phase of liking it very much right now and that's fun. MIRA Sept 2009.)

Anyway, in one scene, I have the new Special Agent in Charge of the Boston office of the FBI talking.

"Your question is duly noted," the SAC replies. "But I repeat, classified. We're following big money. International smuggling. Child labor. Legitimate companies ripped off for millions."

Except in the typset version, it says: International snuggling.

I literally laughed for fifteen minutes. And I'm still laughing now. I guess it's a romantic suspense thing.

JAN: Lately, I've been mispelling my name a lot, ending emails Jn, instead of Jan. As if JAN is just so long, it requires an abbreviation. I think the nature of email and online communication is just going to provide more of these opportunities for humor and humiliation. Although I don't like typos, they bother me less when they are obvious typos. The kind everyone can spot. The public/pubic one is the most embarassing.

HALLIE: And Jan leaves us wondering if she's being deliberately ironic...

What's your favorite typo...and don't you hate it when your computer "fixes" a mistake and makes it even worse? (Like just now I almost used the SPELLCHECKER on this blog.)