Missing my editor-in-chief

I have tasked myself to expand my (near) daily writing to this platform. I recently read Maya Popa’s essay about James Clear’s ‘Atomic Habits’. She starts the summary noting that ‘…fulfilled potential is extraordinary, because we stop short of meeting that potential out of fear that we will never be extraordinary.’ I am new to the self-identity as a writer for exactly the reasons above: my writing is not extraordinary. Yet, I find the drive to write to irresistible.

Unexpectedly, there exists one factor that has hindered my work, although I post anyways. I cannot edit for typos or grammar effectively. I suspect that is because I have been told that I read in chunks. While my brain also can read typoglycemia - where my brain easily unscrambles jumbled words, I don’t actually read the words, I can’t see my mistakes right there in plain sight in my substack posts.

Many of my gentle readers have pointed these errors out to me, so I can later identify them: duplicate words, dangling phrases, and homophones, etc. I thank you for any and all commentary.

To be honest, I have never been a decent editor for my own work. How lucky was I that the love of my life was also a willing and superb editor! Since we met in grad school, he both edited and typed all my writing. I was not the only one who benefited from his editing prowess. At the celebration of his life when he died in 2021, one of the photos was my love curled over a paper, pen in hand, with the caption ‘you are going to need a comma right here’. I suppose editing is not on the usual list of traits a widow misses in their sweetheart. Yet since I write everyday now, I daily miss my love’s generous gift of editing my work for 37 years. My Will Power

Thanks for continuing anyone who is following my Tupelo Press 30/30 project poems.

https://www.tupelopress.org/30-30-project-page-current-month/

And, as usual, a Textku from my archive:

Family

Fully formed squadron

Tending to wing tips and gusts

My cousins, and I

Thank you for reading. (all posts dedicated to Will Forest)