Grammar, grammar everywhere, and not a verb to spare

Somewhere in my brain I know to use than rather than then.

So when I’m rereading my ms (manuscript in writers speak, I’ve been spending too much time in the chat threads) it is incredibly annoying to happen upon these little mistakes.  Then I reread again and see something else.  It’s a never ending cycle of tiny embarrassments.  Not to mention it distracts me from my story.

Imagine my horror when I sent out my very first query today without emailing it to myself first.

Big Mistake.

For some reason I thought I could cut and paste the document I worked so hard on directly into the body of my email, and then send it out into the web universe.  After all I type in NewTimes Roman.  It should be no big deal right?

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I copied myself into the email, and feeling excited at the prospect of maybe finding representation, I decided to open up the copy to gloat a little at my own self.

Horror of horrors.

The entire email was sent out in 8 point font.  EIGHT. POINT. FONT.

I don’t have the best eyesight to begin with, but this was microscopic.  I opened it on my phone and it was unreadable.

What have I done!?!  and you can’t exactly resubmit to the same agent, with a “whoops, I’m so unprofessional that I sent you this unreadable query letter because I didn’t bother to proof it first by sending it to myself before emailing you!?!?!”  No!  You can’t do that!!!

Oh, my OCD is kicking in again.  Now I know to forward the email after I’ve sent it to myself, and then deleted all forwarding information.

Ack.

-Laura

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