Real Words

I’ve written on this blog several times about the fact that typos don’t bother me a bit even though I’m a professional writer. In fact, I happen to like typos. This is something that I wrote about recently over at Scribophile. The article generated a lot of comments from people who completely disagree with my opinion that typos don’t really matter (and might even be amusing).

I won’t rehash yet again here why it is that I like typos because I feel like it’s getting a bit repetitive on this blog since I cover the topic a lot. It’s outlined in the Scribophile article if you haven’t already seen my view point. But I would like to say that there’s one point I haven’t frequently mentioned which is that I tend to like writers who don’t take themselves too seriously as writers.

Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t value your work. I’m just saying that there seems to be a commonality among people who are absolutely sticklers for never seeing a misspelled word in their work or the work of others who they read. Those people tend to take writing super seriously. They are Writers with a capital W.

I guess I’ve just never been a Writer. I’m a writer. I’m a blogger and an author. I value my work and try to take it seriously enough to keep making a living at it. But when it boils down to it, I know that I’m just human. I make errors in my writing. And I really don’t think it’s that big of a deal. We no longer live in an era where a “writer” is somehow elevated to a status higher than that of the average person - and I’m glad for that!