Not so word perfect- living with dyslexia

[mariusthered]

I'll start by saying i'm not writing this for pity, but to make people aware of the problem and give a thread for others who have the same problem.
writing a comic I thought would be fun, but in my three years around the comic industry I must say its not as much fun as I dreamed.
One of my biggest problems in this word perfect society is I suffer from Dyslexia. All my life I have put up with crap from people from age six being slapped by teachers for being "lazy with spelling" (this was allowed in the 70's and explains my comic a bit ) then came bully's who called me dummy and all that did was teach me to punch harder. and it goes on and on.
The problem is when your Dyslexic is for most of that time you don't know you are, and even after you do know the problem it's not an easy fix. I can spell some very hard and long words without any problem, but some small words such as the word "does" can make me struggle, I cannot explain or understand why simple words do this or why I sometimes look at words that are correct and convince myself they are wrong. As for grammar well after 30 years of trying to keep it in my head it's just a loosing battle (years of adult ed classes failed) . I know the basics but when i'm typing they fly out of my head and once on the page I can look at a line all day and not spot the problem.
Then we have the internet and the added problem of American VS English spelling. yer i really need people telling me my work is wrong because they are trying to read it in a whole other language! . at the bottom of my comic i put made in UK that should tell everyone that it has English spelling.
so what am I meant to do? say never mind that I like writing stories because I have dyslexia and give up to consider myself a stupid. NO!
I do what I can and I write for me and if people don't like it they can politely tell me where I have gone wrong or read something else!

I hope this is not too much of a rant, but a lot of people don't understand this condition and it can be very frustrating.

[Chopythes]

I think that we need to raise awareness of Dyslexia far much more than we do today.
Half my family have it, and I'm used to my dad not being able to spell the most common words. He just writes as he talks, phonetically.

I mean, spelling =/= not intelligence.
Most people don't know what's it like to not being able to write, I used to have reading/understanding difficulties when I was a kid so I know the struggle (plus I see my brother and father struggles). And I've heard people telling them how stupid they are and everything. And I know that these two are like the smartest people out there. They're just street smart and not book smart. That's two different things.

However, one great thing about combining comics and dyslexia, is the fact that the pictures helps understanding the story. Or at least that's what my brother says, but I'd like to think of it as such.

And I'll say: Try not to pay much attention to the people calling you stupid. They don't know any better.
Dyslexia is far more common than ever and it's about time people recognize it for what it is.

[60Six]

I certainly hope nobody is calling you dumb or stupid on here for something as simple a spelling mistake! Because for one, I make typos all the time ahah. Don't take it personally if they're just pointing out typos though (Which I'm assuming you aren't). They're important things to have pointed out and if you're keeping your unflattened files, they're very easy mistakes to fix.
I do know what you mean about the UK vs American spelling though... I remember there was one page of my old comic where I spelled the word "storey" in the context of a "4th storey building" and the comment section was nothing but debates about if it should have been spelled storey or story... I think the conclusion people came to was that storey was the UK spelling so I guess this time around I'll just say "story" to avoid that whole debate again lol

[Kura]

Yeaaah, much shit from teachers calling me stupid and lazy or assuming that I'm stupid and lazy, the problem went ignored for years because they refused to test me for learning disabilities. I had an attitude problem AND was one of 'em Asian kids (so that meant I was supposed to be good at school), so clearly my issues with my work wasn't a disability, it was me acting up. I didn't officially get diagnosed until I was out of school. The woman the school had sent to test my younger brother for learning disabilities ask if she could test me as well after picking up on a few things when I was trying to do my work.

For me it's not so much the spelling that bugs me (though I am really bad at that and have to keep googling random badly spelt words because it can figure out what I'm trying to say better than the computer spellcheck) It's when I completely mix up the order of words in a sentence writing, or write incomplete sentences cause it will look find to me at first glace, but be missing a bunch of words all over the place or half the sentence is missing. Reading though is the absolute worse, I can't really read well because I read things out of order or read things as other words, and paragraphs that are too long or text that doesn't have spacing between paragraphs are just jumbled text, and are hard for me to get through.

Granted actually knowing I have dyslexic has helped me a lot when it comes to managing it. I can't say I've gotten better at spelling, reading or anything else, but I at least know what I have problems with or what to look out for. (though sometimes when I'm going back to edit something I read a correct sentence out of order, think it's work and 'fix' it but actually make it wrong. Then after handing it off to someone to edit I'll confuse the hell out of my poor editor cause what I wrote will be so messed up.) but yeah editors help a lot when you have dyslexia (even if it's just a friend and not someone with the official title of editor) so don't feel bad that you need to ask for help, heck writers who don't have dyslexia still need editors too.

[mariusthered]

yes knowing the problem is a help because you can stop beating yourself up when people call you stupid ( and I'm talking from my point of view here)
my problem is due to the road my life has taken I don't have lots of friends, in fact most of my friends now are on the internet around the world somewhere.

[WednesdayAsh]

I know it's cost, but from a comics making perspective: get a copy-editor?

Explain that you are dyslexic at the off, and get someone to help you edit through your stuff, cause your writing has potential, but it needs help to become legible to society at large.

[mariusthered]

trouble is I don't make money from my comic, so i will just have to get a new way of working things out. I use a fonts that doesn't need capitals and from now on plan to put all my scripts through the word processor like I use to do. it makes the job a hell of a lot longer but needs must to please fans.
and I will add because of your review I never posted my comic page yesterday, I am back to feeling very nervous about everything I write so I guess that's one life lesson taught huh!

[WednesdayAsh]

I'm sorry you feel that way, that was not my intention.

[Mharz]

Spelling the words wrong doesn't mean you're dumb. It annoys me that some people think that way. But for the sake of professionalism you really have to get the spelling right otherwise your work won't be taken seriously. If you have a friend who is good at spelling and grammar, have them to proofread your work.

[MichelleAntisocial]

Yeah, I think putting your scripts into a program with spell check is probably the thing to do. I don't know if I'm quite dyslexic, but I do have some sort of reading based learning disability so I can sort of understand where you're coming from.

Regardless of how you handle this, I think it's a little ridiculous that anyone should be holding anybody to such a high spelling standard on this sort of a platform.. I mean, when work gets published, there's an editor that checks and corrects errors, but most of the time I doubt that is the case here, it just wouldn't make sense. A lot of us are working rather quickly to try to make deadlines so sometimes mistakes are going to happen no matter what. I don't have a problem with people pointing stuff out (I want to know so I can fix it), but if they're antagonizing you about spelling and making you feel inferior, I doubt they really understand much about writing, or you know, how to treat people.

[agentfink]

As @MichelleAntisocial mentioned, most often, we only have ourselves to proof read, creating a lot of chances for errors. Posting to threads, asking for critique/comments/feedback, are great for catching those little mistakes. It's great to get positive feedback, but I appreciate someone being honest in where I can improve.

I have reworked my first 8 pages quite a few times after posting, and I hope it makes for a better reading experience. If you ever want to go back on your old pages and rework your copy (script) don't ever be afraid to do so.