Pauly The Clod: Creator Of Neat Sheets.

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It’s true, I am the creator of neat sheets—just only AFTER I’ve pressed that publish button. And even then my polished copy still looks a lot like Sweeney Todd had at it.

This is a story of reconstructive surgery—the blogging kind. On any given day you’ll open up your WordPress account and find bloggers from around the world, each of whom have written sheets and sheets of clean polished copy. All to be examined by you, the reader.

But before that can happen there’s a process called… editing.

Before every blogger publishes something, they go about sewing up their original draft. They do this by making a few new word incisions here, and a couple of sentence resections there.

Everyone except me, that is.

The skillful blogger will remove misspelled words, poor punctuation, bad grammar, and replace each with grammatically working parts. This they do, all BEFORE they press the publish button.

But not me…oh no.

Most bloggers will not submit their poetry, daily drama, photo essays, or humor until their writing has undergone an extensive amount of x-ray like proof-reading. This is likely followed by a little fact-checking before they prescribe some well tested, and time honored  grammatical remedies.

And this whole operation is scheduled and completed on time, so that the readers can get on with their daily lives. Again, all BEFORE… they press that publish button. How do they do it?

These bloggers are skillfully trained pros at what they do. Some have even attended four year universities and demonstrated their education by dissecting their post, BEFORE submitting it for public viewing.

They may even have served an internship writing copy for some big name magazine or newspaper. Some may even have gained some valuable experience in private practice—working on a novel or short story.

And then there’s me…

“The Butcher of WordPress” way too skilled in the art of skewering the English language to even be mentioned in the same breath as the a fore mentioned group of SKILLED PEOPLE.

You see, in my case, the entire act of cutting and slicing away of diseased copy from any post, has become something of an arduous never-ending task. Akin to a surgeon who faces malpractice suits at the drop of a pair of Metzenbaum scissors.

However, this does not exonerate WordPress and their administrators either—including their chief of staff.

They too, are guilty of some atrocious cases of malpractice themselves. They might even be bigger quacks than myself. Why one routine examination of their numerous platform changes could tell you that.

Yet… am I a qualified and successful writing specialist, worthy of being included on the WordPress staff of writers?

Qualified? Are you kidding? I barely graduated Pre-Read! The only residency I’ve ever done was Post OP (Post Operation on a article after pressing Publish). There, I’m an expert in private practice as I perpetually correct every post I write—but unfortunately…AFTER I’ve pressed the publish button.

Meaning: none of my posts are ever finished.

In fact, many of my articles (try all of them) fall prey to reconstructive surgery LONG AFTER I’ve pressed the publish (PANIC) button. Making changes in my text, totally visible to readers.

LIKE SCAR TISSUE—you can’t miss them!

Am I proud of this kind of corrective writing surgery? Sometimes, but I do confess, it often looks like I’m still stitching the piece together after agonizing over the original post… for all of three minutes.

But you must remember, when you leave a scalpel in the body of your work (or post as the case may be), you should still try to go back and perform surgery and correct your mistakes. Yes, it may prove to be a little uncomfortable for the patient—sort of like, performing major surgery without anesthesia—but you may avoid that writing malpractice claim.

This may explain to my readers (patients all) why my posts, and their appearance, seem to evolve like poor Meg Ryan’s face has over the years.

It’s like getting schooled in the art of editing… and yet it still looks bad!

Naturally, this whole post will likely rewrite itself in about a week. Why this sentence alone is proof of that—since I added it just this morning, along with numerous other changes.

So, if in a week you come back to take another stab at reading this gobbledygook—if you are into that kind of torture—you might just discover a whole new post.

The clean up blogger of neat sheet? Uh… well sure… AFTER I’ve made thousands of corrections AFTER pressing the publish button—thus sending the post out uncleaned and unpolished into the blogosphere.

Why, I’d even bet there’s some joker out there right now muttering to himself about how this post still looks grammatically wrong. As always, that mutterer knows best.

That’s because… I’m STILL revising this post even as we speak, and might continue to do so right on up until the end of time!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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