The Festive Manuscript – an ode to Spellcheck!

I’m red faced and writhing in embarrassment. I am dyslexic, but I’m also an optimist. As a dyslexic I KNOW I can’t spell of toffee. As an optimist I BELIEVIE I can learn to spell [this may be too many Disney cartoons coming back to taunt me – if you work hard enough you’ll succeed]!

The issue is my current manuscript. My manuscripts are usually always festive. I don’t mean that I write about Christmas, NO, but they are decorated all over with red and green squiggly lines. Usually.

My current WIP was amazingly squiggle free, the whole 74,000 words of it were anti-festive. So as a dyslexic and relatively intelligent woman what I SHOULD have thought was – what’s wrong with spellcheck. But as an optimist I BELIVIED that my dyslexia was improving and that I’d managed to achieve an error fee MS.

So after my final revisions, MS mark (who know I’ve forgotten it has been edited do much), I smugly press send to my writer friends to read and critique.

Then my ever-so-lovely husband reads the MS. Three days later my husband surfaces looking like he’s been duelling with a hormonal tyrannosaurus rex, to tell me, well; the prognosis isn’t good. And then utters the words ‘you broke spell check, it wasn’t correcting anything.’

Then I recollected this little gem…

Apparently this was a warning from word that spellcheck was about to have a nervous breakdown. As a relatively intelligent dyslexic woman I SHOULD have halted everything and yelled for help. As an optimist I BELIVIED all was fine, laughed it off and carried on (another 50,000 words!)

So thanks to a very patient husband, I have a fixed spell check and a much more readable MS. So MS mark (who know I’ve forgotten it has been edited do much but a least it’s now readable), is pinging its way to my ever so lovely and patient writer friends.

The morel of this story is – respect all your writer friends and don’t ignore cries for help even if that friend is spell check.



Sorry spell check!