I’m dyslexic, and just like Winnie-the-Pooh, my spelling wobbles, unfortunately sometimes with embarrassing results. This can be problematic, especially as I’m trying to write a novel. As if breaking in to the world of literature isn’t difficult enough with dropping book sales, slushpiles and all manner of other obstacles to avoid. How about adding this to your list: having to translate your manuscript from your own version of English, to one that other people can read.
So here are a few words about my daily battles with, well, words.
Case One: Napoleons Ice Cream
It’s an easy mistake to make, and I made it. As a kid, I read the top of the ice-cream pot as ‘Napoleons Ice Cream’ as opposed to ‘Neapolitan Ice Cream’. So, yes, I really thought it was named after the little French man with the big chip on his shoulder. I thought he couldn’t decide which flavour of ice cream was his favourite, and therefore got them all put together in one pot (dictators can do this can’t they?).
Advice : Don’t trust anyone! Because until recently, nobody corrected me…
Napoleon and his favourite ice-cream
Case Two: Fooling the spell checker
This must be the bane of any dyslexic writer’s life – spelling one word wrong, but inadvertently spelling another word correctly in its place. This is BAD! Spell checker doesn’t pick it up, and as it has no red squiggly line underneath it, neither do I.
If you thought Napoleons ice cream was bad, think again. Imagine working for an educational computer company, and selling, say, Brothel printers instead of Brother Printers. Thankfully, I had a boss with a sense of humour. That’s not my only work place mistake, but I’ll spare you the details of the castrated chips.
Advice: Ignore the advice in Case One. Always get someone you trust to proofread your work.
Case Three: Google is for life, not just for searching for websites
Spell checker, that’ll fix everything, right? Well let me tell you – this is a myth. Spell checker most of the time has no idea what word I’m trying to write. Usually I end up spending precious minutes retyping the word in as many different ways as I can think of to try and get it to recognise my intended word, and advise me of the correct spelling, but with no luck.
Should've gone to Google...!
In fact my spell checker seems to have developed an attitude recently. If it was actor, it would have stormed off to its trailer long ago. Yesterday, it point blank refused to check my spelling saying that there were too many mistakes in the manuscript.
Oh dear. Word rebels at last.
Advice: When Word spell checker fails, copy your misspelt word and paste it into the search bar in Google. This will then bring up websites featuring the word you meant, just like magic. How can this be possible? Information. Google saves and remembers all of the searches done worldwide. This includes all of the people who search for something but spelt it incorrectly. It also then remembers what sites they went to. So far has it has never got it wrong for me. It’s a great tool, and it’s also reassuring to know there are other people who are not only really bad at spelling, but spell the same way as you.
Case 4: The Unreadable Manuscript
After ten months of researching, plotting and writing, I completed my first ever manuscript. Feeling an enormous sense of achievement, I printed it off and asked a friend, who happens to be an editor of children’s books, to read it. After two weeks came an awkward conversation. It turned out that my draft novel was unreadable. Why? Well it was one paragraph with a mere 115000 word count. Plus the only grammar used was full stops and the occasional comma.
Advice: Don’t let this deter you. Grammar can be learnt. Writing is a craft, and grammar is one of the tools which you will learn on the journey. (Unlike spelling, which eludes me completely). Get some kids workbooks on grammar, and learn. It’ll take a while, but it can be done.
Alternatively, get help. If you’re serious about writing, budget in some money to get your work proofread, or copyedited, to pick up any errors that you miss. But most important of all: don’t give up.
Case 5: An Ode to Dyslexics Everywhere
Some of the all-time greatest author were dyslexic – Roald Dahl, A.A. Milne , William Butler Yeats and Hans Christian Anderson to name a few. Having dyslexia can be an obstacle, but it is also a gift. Being dyslexic, your head is wired differently, using more of the right side of the brain, the creative half.
At least there's one word you always know how to spell in Scrabble! It's worth 21 points, too.
This means that you think differently, which can be very useful for a writer. Being dyslexic you see and experience the world differently, and then process that information through the creative part of your brain, meaning one thing – ideas. What’s a story without ideas? A story with the absence of creative ideas would be a barren narrative.
So, yes, we may have trouble with words, but that can be fixed. What’s important is having the ideas, and being able to tell a story.
So if you’re dyslexic and you want to write, then write. It won’t be easy, but that not why we do it. There is one thing that unites all writers, dyslexic, and non-dyslexic: we all write because we love to write.
Sally Poyton has done everything from admin to hand-rearing parrots. She studied Art at university and produced works based on fairy tales. With a desire to write, Sally eventually overcame her fear that her dyslexia would prohibit her, and started writing. Now, many hours and manuscript re-writes later, she thinks of herself as a writer. An unpublished and un-agented writer, but still a writer! She enjoys all forms of narrative, from graphic novels to films, but her passion is fairy tales, and the darkness within them.
