A word from the author on her writing

Because I wake up some nights stressing about grammatical errors in my latest post, I feel compelled to explain a few things about writing in developing countries.  As many of you know, I often complain of crappy keyboards.  Sometimes I cannot find the apostrophe button; other times, I am typing on a keyboard covered with plastic or a keyboard where the keys are identifiably by tiny squares of taped-on paper.  And the keyboard I am typing on right now, for example, requires extremely hard key pressing.  After I finish writing this, I will go back and add spaces where necessary as the spacebar key seems to demand the most pressure of them all.  It’s a tiresome job at times.

Don’t even get me started on the mouse situation.

When I was in Bolivia, there were numerous occurrences of all of the computers in the Internet cafe shutting down simultaneously, leaving me frustrated that I had to pay for lost emails and unfinished blog posts.

I feel fortunate if the USB drive is functioning, more excited still if I can upload photos onto Facebook.  In spite of having paid for exra Flickr storage, the  time involved in that uploading process makes me want to get on the Death Train again.  The moral of this paragraph is this: if you’re not on FB, it’s time you followed the masses and joined.

Most times when I finish a post, I feel fulfilled, relaxed, and somewhat accomplished, and in my hasty excitement to click the “Publish” button, I generally don’t proofread my entries.  A shocking confession from someone who used to work in the editorial department of a book publishing site, I know.

At night when I fret over possible errors, for I know I have  language-savvy friends and family reading regularly, I soothe myself back to sleep with promises that one day on this trip when I “have time” I will go back and edit all the entries.   Although I can fall back asleep usually, the minor anxiety returns the next day.  Just a couple of days ago, for example, I was g-chatting with a friend while editing my latest post.

“Do you think people who know me know that I know the difference between to and too?” I asked her.  She failed to respond immediately; but then again, to be fair, g-chat ceased to function temporarily, and when we resumed our conversation, the question was lost.

“Take care, have fun in Chile,” she wrote, leaving me no choice but to tell you directly and unabashedly that I do indeed know the difference between to and too.

In spite of the fact that I am reading some classics down here that I could never absorb on my thirty minute commute involving a train transfer in NY (muchas gracias, Jane, for Lolita and The Brothers Karamazov!), I fear that in my eagerness to learn and speak Spanish, I am losing my vocabularly.  Thank goodness for Nina G’s emails that stimulate me intellectually in spite of making me wonder what I am missing in my weekly New Yorker readings.  (It may not be long, however, until I have the opportunity to indulge in my own paper copy of the New Yorker as I await a care package from my dear old friend Alison, who has been asking me since I left for an address for which to send me something.)

An ex-boyfriend left me feeling slightly reassured when he wrote recently, “Is it wierd that I correct gramatical and spelling errors only when I’m writing you? Your english prowess still casts a shadow on me [sic].”

In spite of having changed since the start of my journey–I put  sugar in my coffee and am considering eating a whole banana–I haven’t shaken my desire to produce beautiful, correct, fluid, and engaging writing, and even if it doesn’t always contain these characteristics precisely as I wish, I’m working on it.

Oh, and one final word before I publish, er, proofread, this entry, having my laptop break down at the Newark airport was most definitely a very good thing.  Sending it back to the States has allowed me to pack my daypack with only the most important things: sweaters, toilet paper, avocados, cookies, and whiskey!