Okay, maybe not my hoo-ha specifically.
I’m talking about the lessons my book baby – who just happens to sport a gloriously happy va-J-J on her front cover (hence the hoo-ha aspect to this posts cheeky title) – can teach us. The lessons extending beyond the delicious information in her eclectic chapters. Holy Guaca-foodgasm-mole! Not yet a week old and my papery darling is already wiser than most.
Lesson #1: Kiddlets have minds of their own.
Indeed. As I mentioned in my last post, my papery offspring decided that she wanted to create a game that you could play as you devoured her glorious pages. She’s called it Where’s Whoopsies? It’s like Where’s Wolly? – minus the stripes. I combed through her meticulously. My editors and publishers and designers did too. Even her Grandmumsy (my snazzy Mamma T) came to the party in the final editing stages. We toiled to iron out even the most minor of kinks. Yet my sweet girl decided to play hide and seek with a few minor corrections. You (the reader) have two options;
- Find these ‘whoopsies’ (cheeky errors) and ‘win’ the game
- Let your incredible brains correct the errors before you consciously notice them
This brings is to lesson # 2
Lesson #2: Our bodies truly are astonishing
Okay, so I’ll admit that my heart sank when I initially noticed my baby’s grammar whoopsies. Then she looked at me with her endearing, happy eyes and said “but Mamma, look how clever your brain is. It corrected the words in your mind’s eye”. She’s right. As much as our snazzy ‘override’ mechanism makes the editing process a challenge, our in-built autocorrection is something to behold.
Lesson #3: Life wasn’t meant to be airbrushed
My girl is an old soul. Despite being born in the age of insta-filters and photoshop, she champions old school realness. The days where we took photos and hoped for the best because we couldn’t edit or delete. Recycling unwanted snaps post-development was as ‘airbrushed’ as it got. Before autocorrect most things were written by hand on the fly and mishaps were an inevitable part of the process. We’ve come to expect perfection and thus chase elusive ideals. My book baby is pretty darn special. Pretty darn close to perfect. Yet she comes with a small handful of oversights as if to say “I’m keeping it real”. Bless her rectangular papery pages.
Lesson #4: Let it Go.
I’m not going to tell you what the errors are or where they’re located. In all honestly I hope that your glorious brains override these insignificant boo-boos. That said, if you do win the game of Where’s Whoopsies I trust that it won’t mean any more to you than it does to me when I find typos in my favourite books. Never does a minor error take away from the good value and overall message. I trust that the compassion I have for my favourite authors will come back to me with my glorious audience. That or they’ll miss them altogether. Either way, I’m letting all recently discovered (and yet to be noticed – if there’s still a few silly buggers lurking) slide and instead focus on the beauty of what I set out to and have achieved. Health, Happiness and Humour for myself and the world.
This wise little girl can’t wait to befriend you. Adopt her below.
