My faithful readers have learned one thing, I can't spell very well for an award winning novelist. I also miss punctuation. It is time to make a confession. I am a high functioning dyslexic.
Dyslexia is a spectrum like a rainbow. If the colors of the rainbow are red orange yellow green blue indigo violet. I would put myself at yellow. For me however, if someone were to mix green and blue, I probably wouldn't notice. Well, I would notice on the third time I went through it. I've learned to compensate.
According to my mother, I had the highest math score the year I applied to Albuquerque Academy. However, she says that they couldn't read my hand written entrance essay. I don't know if that's true because I received a D in math. We use hand write papers in cursive back then, so needless to say I did set the world on fire. I wonder if all the kids who won spelling bees went onto write novels.
Perhaps the reason I did so well on standardized tests was that the choices were vertical rather than horizontal
A
B
C
D
rather than ABCD or ABDC as I would see it. That's just a theory, but it does make sense.
When I was in college at Cornell, a professor told me that I had an amazing term paper, but I was a horrible speller. I lied, he didn't actually told me that I had an amazing term paper.
When my first novel, Rattlesnake Lawyer was published, there were several hundred mistakes in it. Villalobos is spelled Villabobos. I now pay someone to edit my stuff. Spell check has changed my life. But there's no spell check for every situation.
So parents out there, if your kid is not doing well on the spelling bee, just remember they might grow up to be a nvolist.
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