You know that phenomenon when you find yourself reading way past your bedtime and your eyes start to cross a little? And suddenly, common words don't look ... right? You see the word "and" and it looks like the publisher goofed up. You think, "That should say 'and' and it says, wait ... what?! It does say 'and.' How could that be?" And then (because of my age) I think, "Wow. I might be having a mild stroke." so I put my arms over my head and stick out my tongue (because, according to the internet, if you can do those things, chances are you are not having a stoke.) Then I turn off my clip-on reading light, say my prayers and generally go right to sleep.
When I wake up the next day, I check the last sentence I read. "And" is "and" ... and appears to have always been that way.
Now I have this thing going on where I type a word and Word doesn't like it. That normally doesn't bother me in a first draft; misspelling stuff is part of the "get it out, get it out fast, get it out now!" But twice so far I have stared angrily at the monitor, feeling strangely victimized. "There's nothing wrong with that," I think, almost seething with resentment. I do the right-click thing to have Word offer me some correctly spelled options, but the word I want isn't there. The word I want is already on the page.
The first time it happened, the word was "annoyment," as in: Vicki felt a flash of annoyment.
The second time it happened, the word was "functual," as in: "I'm sorry. That restroom isn't functual."
"Functual" is an even better word! If it were one, that is.
Look at NaNoWriMo, for crying out loud. That's a word. Blogger doesn't even flag it as a misspelling anymore. And don't even get me started on the word "blog."
Time to stop squandelling word count here and get back to work before my eyes cross for the day.
