As I’ve been doing the final proof of my manuscript for Walking With the Muse these past few days I’ve been shocked at how many little typos made it through multiple rounds of proofing and different sets of eyes.
Some of these short stories had already been published years ago, with mistakes. To think how close I came to releasing this out into the world in book form makes me a little embarrassed to say the least. I’m always surprised by how we can, at times, be so incredibly blind to things right in front of our faces. It's safe to say I felt a little Homer Simpson-ish.
I’m happy to say I think all of those pesky—substitutions, omissions, transpositions, doublings, missing spaces, extra spaces, and even those extra-pesky atomic typos are now a thing of the past. At least most of them. All’s well that ends well.
Later this week I’ll be concentrating on reviewing the final draft of the book's full cover spread. This is getting real now and I can barely contain myself.
Stalker
I was walking the nature trail the other day and I felt like I was being watched—as it turns out I was. This curious fawn was checking me out from about ten feet away. My mom, who used to feed the deer behind her apartment told me this is the time of the year that female deer start giving their fawns a little more freedom. They allow the fawn to roam but watch from the edge of the woods. If the mothers sense danger they signal to the fawn to come running back to them.
After I got home I was relaxing on the deck with some tea and felt eyes on me again—the fawn showed up again in our back field. I think I made a friend. : )
This is the kind of stalker that I'm happy to have.
Nobody's Going to Save Us (but Us)
Incase you've missed it—which I don't think could be possible at this point—a recent UCDavis study revealed most of the foods sold in the US that claim to be made with avocado oil are, in fact, made with inflammatory seed oils.
You reach for that bag of chips labeled "made with avocado oil," the ones priced like they're a healthy elixir of liquid gold, and what do you get? A mouthful of cheaper oils that have been proven harmfully inflammatory to the human body. Eighty-nine percent of these processed foods—chips, mayo, dressings—fail the authenticity test. That's not a rounding error; that's a full-blown scam on the shelf. You pay the premium because you want do what's right for your health, the monounsaturated goodness, something better than the industrial sludge. Instead, you're getting the culinary equivalent of a three-card monte game run by suppliers who realized long ago that no government regulatory agency is watching out for the consumer.
This isn't some minor labeling mix-up. It's just another chapter of the same old American food racket. Take something people actually care about, water it down with whatever's cheaper, and bank on the fact that most of us won't notice for a while, then rake in those extra profits for as long as possible.
Olive oil's been exposed for decades so people are aware and already know what to look for. Avocado oil? Relatively new, healthy, expensive—perfect for the corporate grifters. Brands might claim ignorance, hiding behind layers of brokers and suppliers, and co-packers but ignorance is no defense when you're charging extra for purity that isn't there. The consumer gets screwed in twice. Higher prices for a product that is, in too many cases, a total fraud.
It's wrong because labels should mean something. Not some marketing fairytale on the package, but the actual stuff that we pay for and consume. When you sell people a lie about what they're putting in their bodies, you erode whatever scrap of trust remains in the system. We've seen this before with olive oil, maple syrup, with honey, with virtually any other ingredient they can swap out to save a few cents per unit. Enough is enough. It's time to demand the accurate labeling, proper testing, and regulations. Sadly, until this changes making these prepared food items ourselves or buying local from trusted sources are really the only viable options left here in America.
All for now. Make this a wonderful day.
(Gifs sourced from Giphy.com)
It happens more than you think. The typos I mean. I've read a few high level books that had errors like that in them. Wait, what am I supposed to be looking for with olive oil? I just use Bertoli. I think that is the name. I've been using a lot of avocado oil lately, but then again, maybe not.
I see them all the time in printed material, billboards, even ATM screens. Most of the olive oil that's sold in grocery stores is fake, or very low quality but the newest culprit is avocado oil. There are apps and websites that will publish the brands that are real. I know the Graza brand of olive oil scores consistently high but I'm not sure about Bertoli.
I think Berio is actually what we usually get. I'll have to check it out.
I posted a different link to an article earlier and deleted it because I discovered it was a website sponsored by the olive oil producers themselves. It’s tricky to find accurate information.
Here’s a link to the olive oil brands that are authentic.
I have a graphic designer friend who says the job’s not finished unless there’s a typo.
And note that carpet weavers in central Asia intentionally add at least one mistake to their weaving, believing that perfection is only for the works of Allah.
Well, if that's the case, my manuscript was very finished! Lol. Interesting about the carpet weavers! I think a few mistakes here and there make things a little more "human" and sometimes those mistakes end up giving creative works more personality.
Local farmer markets are getting more customers these days. With all the news of contaminated lettuce and other veggies and fruits. People are preferring to buy local versus stuff mass produced and imported for the supermarket.
I think people are definitely losing trust in both large corporations and the regulatory agencies that are supposed to be looking out for us. I'd love to see a large shift to consumers buying locally.
I've read great books by famous writers with typos. More than I'd like. Some are so obvious that the authors feel compelled to include an erratum. I loved the photos of your stalker. (Is it a male or female stalker?) As for the avocado oil, that's one of the advantages of living in Caribbean countries. Here, there are health food stores that make all kinds of oils (avocado, coconut, the miraculous oregano oil, and even guanabana oil), and you can see the process, and they're not expensive at all. I imagine that the more industrialized they are, the more expensive and less pure they are. A hug, my friend.
When I worked corporate proofing was a large part of my job and it trained me to spot typos. It's crazy to see how many make it out into the world. I've even found typos on ATM screens! Lol. I've lived with some of these short stories in the manuscript for so long I think I'd just become blind to the typos in my own writing. I think the deer was a female. We haven't seen her for about a week now but I'm sure they're around. They live in the woods around our development. She was so curious! That would be amazing to have access to all that fresh produce. If I lived in a warmer climate I'd be growing all kinds of things and would probably give away what I couldn't eat. Thanks Nancy! I hope you're having a good week!
Back in the 80s I had a part-time job with the publisher of American Express calendar books. I spent a few months as a proofreader and then a month as a copyeditor. It was good training. That stuff is basically boring, so catching errors required the closest attention. It was my job to catch mistakes.
I notice in recent years, mostly in the last couple of years, I miss stuff I never would have missed before. I think it's age. I leave whole words out sometimes. It's disconcerting. It's a privilege to age (a lot of people don't get to do that) and it is also a humbling experience :)
As for olive oil. I only buy top brands and virgin. As a grandchild of Sicilian immigrants and niece of a man who used to make his own olive oil, I don't skimp on the stuff. Cheap olive oil simply doesn't cut it for Sicilians.
I'm glad you caught those errors. As nancybriti1 said, I find typos in books all the time.
I did a lot of proofing when I worked corporate. We designed credit insurance programs for financial institutions and that included designing/proofing all of the training materials and applications. Over my 23 years of doing that typos would jump out at me—still do. I think this manuscript has been different because I've lived with some of these stories for so long I've become blind to the errors.
I've noticed a little of that "slipping" myself. One error was particularly embarrassing. The title of one of my more recent stories in the book was "Be Weary of What You Wish For" and should have been "Be WARY of What You Wish For". That was one of the more glaring ones.
Sadly, not even all oils labeled as EVOO are real or unadulterated olive oil, based on independent studies. I'm sure though having grown up having the real stuff you know when it's real and fresh probably by taste alone.
Thank you! I'm happy with the manuscript now. It felt really good handing it off in its current form.
Wow! That olive oil thing is really upsetting. People are horrible sometimes, aren't they? I just read up on the adulteration issue. https://www.oliveoilsource.com/info/adulterated-fraudulent-extra-virgin-olive-oil Astonishing, the pervasiveness of the fraud.
Weary instead of wary. Oh my heavens, that would kill me..in a title!!! Since I self publish all my books (which is probably why nobody buys them 😄) I can just take them down and correct the error. Usually I don't bother--too much work--but that one, that one I would probably address.
We have a lot in common, you and I. The proofreading background is interesting. I was invited to stay on and work as a researcher/proofreader but the pay was horrible. While I am not very materialistic, exploitation offends me. I loved the research part of the job, though. I can get lost in minutiae. In those days it would take a lot of effort to find out when the moon was going to set five years hence (the kind of thing I had to know). Nowadays, just ask Google.
Very much so! The same thing has happened with honey, maple syrup, and now—avocado oil.
As my mom often says...I was mortified! I've published that story elsewhere as-is. I wonder if anyone else even noticed?! If so, no one brought it to my attention. Thank God it was discovered before the book was uploaded.
It sounds like we do have a lot in common! Sadly, you're right, that kind of work didn't pay well. Now, AI has taken much of it over. I don't think AI is quite powerful enough to catch the subtleties though but it will get there in time. I miss sitting in a quiet library sometimes, looking things up. I do have to say though that I also love having the answers at my fingertips. I'm always going down rabbit holes about things I wasn't aware of.
We can read the same thing over and over and still miss something that's right in front of us. I experince it whenever I am not motivated.