Well, there was the time that I was scanning a book that contained all
of the Hal Clement Mission of Gravity stories, well over 500 pages, and
when I was about four pages from the end a thunderstorm came up. I had
been working on it for a long time. I scanned each page and meticulously
preproofed each one with a deranged perfectionist mentality too.??
Thunderstorm or no thunderstorm I did not want to stop when I was
finally so close to the end. Then there was a power failure. When the
electricity came back on I found that the entire book had vanished. I
could find no way to recover it. So I promptly started all over.
___
Sam Harris
???Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen
yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence
as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell
him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who
will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every
incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence what
so ever.???
??? Sam Harris,
On 2/12/2020 12:45 AM, Estelnalissi wrote:
Dear Booksharian Friends,
When I was first learning the computer I???d jerk back as if I???d been burned if I thought I???d struck the wrong key.?? My teachers would say something like, ???Take it easy, you won???t break it.???
I???ve had a book called Polly from Larry Lumpkin
for 6 weeks! I was so motivated when I proofread it that I stayed up until after daylight to finish it. Then a big, bad thing happened. I was finishing up my last checks, spell checking, page numbering checking, asterisk and dash and double dash spacing checking, title page and chapter formatting checking, and somewhere as that was going on all of the letter A, both upper and lower case vanished from the book, every single one from the back cover to the last page! My feelings of accomplishment vanished with the ayes.
I was so annoyed that I ignored Polly for weeks. I knew I???d have to start all over, that replacing the ayes as I went along would take longer and have a greater risk of my introducing errors than starting over. Part of the problem was that that having read every word of Polly as I do with all the books I proofread, I knew I???d be very bored rereading it.
Yesterday I finally dug in and started over with Polly and tonight I checked it in.
My computer has been doing strange things lately. It???s 6 and a half years old and has been damaged since a friend wrongly installed our new printer. As much as I???d like to blame the missing Ayes on my computer I feel quite sure, in my sleepiness, I keyboarded something wrong.
I???m sharing this to illustrate how, after proofreading many, many hundreds of books with deranged perfectionist care, you can flub up in a never before experienced way.
Feel free to share any of your flubbings so I won???t feel like the only one.
I once advised a proofreader not to work when tired. Time to follow my own advice.
Always with love,
Lissi
