For many years, I have been meeting friends
and clients for coffee at a local shop that is convenient to my house. We sit
there for an hour or an hour and a half discussing manuscripts, or in the case
of my friends, chit-chatting about this
and that. For at least a decade, I have texted, emailed, or verbally requested
people to meet me at Timothy's World of Coffee. Yet
I just realized last week that there is no such location.
To my great surprise, I looked up the
coffee shop online to confirm their hours only to discover that the name of the
restaurant is Timothy's World Coffee. Aside from feeling momentarily
embarrassed, I was stunned. How could I have sat in that coffee shop for ten years looking at the name on the wall or
passing by in my car with Timothy's World Coffee glaring back at me so
blatantly? What happened? How did I miss that?
I believe that my mind just filled in the
blank. I had always thought that it was Timothy's World of Coffee, and so I saw
what I wanted to see. I saw what I expected to see. It took me more than ten years to see what actually was.
This is just a cautionary warning for writers to find other ways to
proofread your material. You don't have to have someone else do it, but make
sure that you are alert and that your mind is open to the possibility that you
could have made a mistake that you aren't aware of.
Also, double check. Ask Siri or Alexa. They know everything. Google it. Don't
assume that you know what you think you know. Sometimes our mind can play
tricks on us.
