In good company

Part of what made me decide to be a writer was winning a $50 savings bond for an essay on Children's rights when I was 6-years-old. It was also about this time it became clear just how awful I am at spelling.

Over the following 20+ years I’ve struggled almost daily-- try as I might, I still have the spelling ability of a slightly dim-witted child. Ironically, I make a living as a writer and editor, and even for a time as a copy editor. Practice and study has made my grammar and vocabulary skills passable and maybe even a little above average.

But nothing has made more than incremental improvements in my spelling. My childhood friend Jessie taught me mnemonic devices to for words I couldn’t spell (it says something about my brain that I still recite “Silly Cats in Egypt Never Catch Elephants” every time I write the word “science”). After a substitute teacher sent my mom a spelling test in which I’d missed every single word, my mom and I tired everything we could think of to drill the correct sequence of letters for my weekly list of words into my brain (I finally settled on conditioning myself by listening to tape recordings of the spellings over and over before the test). As an adult I’ve managed to mostly cover my affliction at work, but not at all from my friends. Between IM conversations, the spelling bee I subject my roommate to whenever she’s nearby when I’m writing, or my un-natural anxiety when someone suggests a game of scrabble, my lack of spelling ability is a kind of running joke.

But, like some of the other things about myself that I’ve spent years being self-conscious of, I’ve come to accept it as just part of who I am. The best part? I’m not alone. Today I found this fantastic list of six wordsmiths who couldn’t spell. The list is comprised of mostly famous writers...and the inventor of Scrabble. Proving that a love a words and the ability to spell don’t have to go hand in hand.