Because-tume Drama

I was recently giving my book a final edit before sending it to the publishers and I decided to make a change to the dialogue of the main character.

All through the book I had her saying ‘cos’ instead of ‘because’ but decided that actually it would work better if I reversed this.

So, in order to make sure I didn’t miss any, I used the ‘Find and Replace’ facility in Word and pressed ‘Find and Replace All’.

Sorted.

Or so I thought.

It was only when I carried on with my edit that I discovered the terrible truth.

The book is all about the production of a play. A play involving  a stage, a script, props and, of course, costumes.

Or ‘becausetumes’ as they had now become.

I was telling some writer friends about this at the weekend, hoping I’d get some sympathy, but oh no, all I got was hysterical laughter and really hilarious jokes such as: ‘good job the character didn’t play for the Broncos – or the Bronbecauses!’ ‘Good job she didn’t love cos lettuce. Can you imagine – “she made herself a bacon and because sandwich he he he!”‘

I nearly a-because-ted them, I can tell you!

I don’t know, sometimes it feels like all this modern technology that is meant to make our lives easier only ends up making it a whole lot more complicated. What say you…?

PS: HOROSCOPE WATCH – No shocking proposal so so far it’s one-nil to me. According to today’s stars my moon is ‘sextile’ and therefore I’m going to be tying up some loose ends. Getting rid of all those ‘becausetumes’ perhaps?

Talking out of Uranus?

This morning, on a particularly tedious tube journey across London, I found myself reading the horoscopes in the free paper.

The following line in my forecast caught my eye:

‘Your personal life is subject to a proposal, which will shock even you!’

The first thought that entered my head was, could Neil Diamond be about to realise the error of his ways? Then various other, more x-rated visions started flitting before my eyes.

Let me tell you at this point that crowded tube carriages mid rush hour are not exactly conducive to fantasies of a carnal nature, unless of course you have a penchant for sticking your face in smelly armpits or being told to ‘mind the gap’.

Anyway, I then got to thinking that it might be fun to conduct an experiment. Every day for the coming week I am going to log down my horoscopes and report back on whether or not they come true. 

Off now to await my ‘shocking’ proposal!