It’s been no secret that writing Gate of Myth and Power has been kind of rocky, and not because of the story itself but because of the plethora of surgeries and procedures I’ve had since late 2021. Because of surgeries/procedures, I’ve been on a variety of medications that have made for some interesting story telling choices I made while writing that my editor and/or I were given the joy of rediscovering during the editing process.
Now, typically you’ll find some funny stuff while editing books, and since I have a reading disability, my stories tend to have more errors than average–so bless my poor editor’s heart for tackling my books with me, hahah. But apparently Kitty-on-heavy-meds-while-writing is a totally new level of editing hilarity. So let’s go over some of the top five finds!
Embroidered Garden Cloth: So what I was attempting to describe was one of those fancy embroidered arm chairs that has a floral pattern, similar to the one pictured below, which happens to be Aristide’s favorite chair. What I wrote was “A chair covered in embroidered garden cloth.” Welp. So much for elegance.
Self Given Head Message: No, I don’t mean head massage, I mean message. I have no idea what I meant here–neither did my editor–and the context of the story didn’t help. Did I mean Chloe’s thoughts? Did I mean Chloe was rubbing her head? No idea. I had to change the paragraph entirely because there was no way I could make any sense of it.
Salad Wof eyes: It was supposed to read “Ker looked at Chloe with sad wolfish eyes” what I wrote was “Ker looked at Chloe with salad wof eyes,” and then I proceeded to write “salad wof eyes” three different times on THREE DIFFERENT DAYS.
An Entire Scene of Grimly: For one entire scene, literally every character said said things “grimly,” including things that were not at all grim, like a reference to donuts and several jokes. I have no idea why I did this, it was near the end of the book so it might have been that I was personally feeling grim about meeting the deadline and it was slipping out in my writing…
Cuckoo Clocktower: For an entire scene, I apparently lost all sense of setting, and I wrote in King’s Queen that the clocktower, seen multiple times in King’s Shadow, was a cuckoo clock. As in, I had some clockwork figures pop out to ring bells–it was a thing.
Honorable Mention: This mess-up is actually from Fated–Pack of Dawn and Destiny’s last book, but I wrote that in 2022 and tied it up right as my health started to take a serious nosedive, so we’re going to count it. For the entire book–and I mean the entire book–I forgot the word pride/prideful existed. Whenever I was in a situation that should have used those terms, I wrote–I kid you not– “Full of Proudness.” Yep.
Characters all over were getting “Full of Proudness.” And this was after I’d written it AND edited it! It was only after my editor emailed me to remind me that the word “pride” was a thing that it got fixed.
So yeah, it’s been an amusing experience–and that would also be why I’m so tight to the deadline with this one! (Well, editing and the actual writing since King’s Queen was just so loooong.) Speaking of which, King’s Queen is next week! Are you ready for it?!
Thanks for reading, Champion, and have a lovely day!
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