The importance of Dedication or Marsha, Marcea, Marcia?

In the last post I believe I told a tiny fib. I suggested that the fiddle-faddle polish-up of Stormwalkers had little impact on the overall quality of the manuscript. I must make a correction on that count. There was one mistake that I overlooked to the last, and yes, I feel it has a great impact on my intent and professional character.

An apology is in order. I have been most negligent by a magnitude of stupid in one part of the book. And I shall wear that shame on my lapel as a scarlet letter for many days to come.

You see, while parsing words and fretting over spaces, I mindlessly overlooked the dedication page. Truly, this page was set eons ago, I knew what I was doing when I wrote my part—I knew the reasons and their importance for each individual named. But apparently what I didn't know was the true spelling of one person's name. A rank oversight.

Yesterday, at the computer, Jim and I were verifying the last bit of code written for the Stormwalkers web pages. I was scrolling quickly through to the toc (table of contents) and passed the dedication page.

Jim laughed.

Ice ran up my spine. “What?” I thought, indents wrong?—more double spacing somewhere?—is it in the wrong location?

“You spelled Marcia's name wrong.” He laughed again.

“What?”

Jim pointed to the screen “Whew, good thing we caught it now, before it went up like that.”

“What?”A cold sweat took me. “Dude! What are you saying?”

“You spelled Marcia's name wrong. Is it ever spelled like that? I've never seen it spelled like that.”

“No, no, no!”

“What do you mean, no? Marcia is spelled M-a-r-c-i-a. Your spelling doesn't even make sense.”

I half jumped from my chair. “You're wrong! Why would I do that? No, I'm sure I checked her name when we made the dedication.”

“Well, it's wrong. I'll check one of her books—no, wait they were packed up. Look for her on the internet.”

I did so, with an author search. “No, no! Idiot! I'm an idiot!”

Jim laughed again. “Don't worry, we caught it. Just fix it.”

I trill out a self deprecating laugh that makes me sound half-mad. “You don't understand!”

“What?”

“It's been out there in all the book forms since it was first published. Oh, why didn't anyone tell me? Wahawaaaaaa!”

The hours passed. The book was finished. I fell asleep. Four AM. arrived. I woke in a cold sweat with eyes popping from my skull. “Why didn't anyone tell me? Wahawaaaaaa!”

Moral of the story? Simple: Be diligent and have dedication to the craft. It can be an unwieldy beast.

***

An apology:

To any that know me and looked at the dedication asking, “Who's that?” And to Marcia. I am deeply sorry for this callous oversight. A public flogging is too good for me. 

An addendum to the dedication:

Marcia authored a series of books in the 1980's that I had collected in my twenties. Little did I know at that time, one day, I would have the privilege of attending a writer's group (which lasted for many years) that Marcia was a valuable part of. Her candor and honesty coupled with her life experience and brilliant wit taught me much during that time. She was unassuming, helpful, and always spoke directly to any issue treating the individual in fair trade. As a very green writer I most certainly ate up any words of instruction she offered and probably imposed upon her good graces far too often to be congenial and yet she accepted this without rebuke or complaint. When Eric and I handed her half of a 500,00 word manuscript for critiquing, she accepted it with a smile and then line-edited the entire piece for no more than a thank you. To this day I keep this tome of knowledge secreted away and consider it as one of my most valued possessions. Thank you M-A-R-C-I-A! I am forever in your debt.

 

Best wishes always!