Editing a novel to get it ready to publish is a daunting task – in many ways harder than writing the story in the first place. Before I ask anyone else to read my work, I’ve scoured it for any verbal nonsense I can find. When I reach the ‘have-someone-else-edit-this’ stage of writing, though, it never fails that I am humbled. After I got Mountain Time back from my editor, I learned that for my whole life I have misunderstood the word describing the bolt of electricity that jabs down from the sky during a storm. I always called it ‘lightening’. Hmmm. Really, it’s lightning. One less syllable. When I received Changing Skies back from my editor, I was shown the error of my ways with two other words. Did you know that complement and compliment are both words, aren’t caught by spell-check, and mean two different things? Apparently I didn’t. Same goes for assent and ascent. Huh! Be assured as you read Changing Skies that I’ve spelled them and used them correctly, through no fault of my own!
I have a feeling that even if I spell lightning wrong, or use the wrong form of complement, you would be able and willing to understand what I was trying to say. You might shake your head at my mistake, but you’d get my point. Why is it then, that Americans are currently having such trouble communicating? It seems as if it has become fashionable to aggressively misunderstand another person’s intent, especially when there’s a chance you don’t agree with them. Creating controversy by deliberately misinterpreting another’s words is so derisive and divisive. It’s mean, and it damages us all. That’s a kind of verbal nonsense that I wish we could edit out of the story we are living.
