The Big Mistake

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I spent many years backstage as a part of different theatre companies. I've been backstage as an actor, a stage manager and even as a director. You learn many things from being backstage. You learn that everything is not what it looks. You learn to avoid certain people when they're doing their odd pre-show rituals. You become accustomed to hearing (shall I say) colorful metaphors. You learn very quickly that hearing "uh-oh" is the worst thing to hear. It means disaster. Someone dropping something heavy on their foot earns a colorful metaphor. Someone dropping dead earns an uh-oh.

I have learned over recent years that writing comes with its own set of disasters. There are the typos. The blatant mis-spellings. The overuse of the same words. Poor sentence construction. The list continues. All of these are mild errors in my opinion and easily fixed; much like rushing back to the dressing room because you realized that you forgot to put on your shoes. (trust me, it happens)

Then there are the bigger mistakes; the undefined character or (even worse) the lazily defined character. Messy dialogue. Too much description or way too little. These mistakes will take longer to fix but are still within the realm of repair.

But what about the dreaded uh-ohs? I had it happen to me a few years ago and it was not a pretty sight. Here followeth my confession. I realized that my solution to the mystery made no sense at all. None. I had been so enraptured with all my other lovely characters and all my lovely red herrings that the result was I had given scant attention to the guilty party or his actions because I knew he was the one. Uh-oh. I felt as if I (once again) was the winner of the "Dumber Than a Stick" award. This uh-oh took weeks to fix as major re-writing was in order as many, many choruses of "How Stupid Are You Really?" ran through my head.

It did get fixed.

How do you handle your writing disasters? With careful thought? With humor? With liquor?