The Tears and Triumphs of a New Author - Chapter 5

The Tears and Triumphs of a New Author

Chapter 5


As I thought back over my life and analyzed my thoughts on justice, I realized that justice comes in all shapes and sizes and that one’s concept of justice, or injustice is a very subjective thing.
I decided to start back in my childhood years and see how my ideas of justice were molded and how they changed over the years.
I typed my first sentence. As the Professor tells Walt in the book, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step”. I had just taken mine.
It’s now confession time.
First, I have a Master’s Degree, but, sad to say, I’ve never taken a typing class. Yep, I’m a hunt-n-pecker. I typed the entire novel with the middle finger of my right hand. Well, that’s not entirely true. I can hit the shift key for capitalization with my left thumb. So for all of you out there who want to write but can’t type, jump right in.
Second, while I’ve done a lot of writing and speaking, I’ve never written for publication. I write a speech and no one sees it but me. Who cares about punctuation?
My wife, the editor does, that’s who!
I would peck out a few chapters at a time and submit them to Peg to approve or disprove. If they passed muster, Peg would re-type the chapters in her computer. Incidentally, she can type with all ten fingers.
My wife isn’t prone to use profanity, but as she set about polishing my work, I definitely heard muttering of a sordid nature coming from her side of the room.
In the Microsoft Word program, misspelled words are underlined in red and errors in syntax are underlined in green. My first pages looked like a Christmas tree had exploded on the screen: red and green everywhere.
We soon learned that if we were going to produce something readable, it was back to school. We searched and read article after article from the Internet on writing and punctuation. I would be pecking away and Peg would interrupt me, “You need to come read this.” So I did.
Fortunately, the final editing was her job, but I learned enough for the first draft to keep her mumbling to a minimum.
As the storyline progressed, I saw another main character emerge, Lady Justice. As Walt and his scrappy senior friends took on the various evildoers, I found the theme had developed into old-timers giving Lady Justice a helping hand, so a new title was born: “ Lady Justice, The Wrinkled Years”. Cute, Huh?
I liked it for awhile, but soon the title that made Peg double over with laughter was born.