Having made it through another Thanksgiving celebration held at our tiny cabin in the woods, I find myself deeply grateful for family - by blood, marriage, and adoption from the shelter.

My folks and my in-laws got along swimmingly, as always.  Everyone ate what was put before them and praised it glowingly!  (The praise was especially complimentary if they had made it themselves, in accordance with family tradition.) 

Even Lee Wardlaw's Kitty Litter cake (made famous in limited circles by Lee's far more famous picture book, Won Ton - A Cat Tale Told in Haiku) was accepted with grace, humor, and a touch of hysterical laughter.  BTW Lee, I think it tastes even better the next day.  Of course, it looks just as bad!

Our dogs were the entertainment committee, ever at the ready with a head to pet or a belly to scratch.  They even organized a couple of walks to work off some excess calories.

All in all, I'd say it went off without a hitch, but best of all my family is ready to roll with whatever hitches might come.  That was a huge comfort early on, as we prepared to barbeque our first turkey.   Ahhh.

Even the turkey was declared to be a success, though, thanks to blessings from brother Carl, we've no doubt.  He was with us in spirit on what would have been his 42nd birthday, and we were thankful to have had him only for a short time in life but forever in our memories.

Yesterday was an exciting day!  My good friend the talented artist, Siri Weber Feeney, put the finishing touches on the cover illustration for my YA science fiction novel, Synapse.   

Siri was patient with me over the last few months as we explored the options for a story with three main characters, looking for just the right combination of clarity as a thumbnail, tone and attractiveness.   (Click here for more on Siri’s process. Synapse is down under Young Adult Books.)  

She did it!  I’m so happy with my new cover I’m dancing on clouds.

Now back to the final edits.  Yes, this time I really do mean final!

How can teeny tiny little filler-words have such a huge impact on meaning?  Take articles and possessive pronouns, for example.  

According to Wikipedia “Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun."  These are words like “the,” “a” and “an.”  Possessive pronouns, of course, would be things like “his,” “her” and “their.”

They’re almost invisible, for crying out loud!   You read right over them without a second thought, but what a huge difference they make in meaning.  For example, here are my gut responses to the following nearly identical sentences taken totally without context.

She picked up a hat and tossed it into the lake!  – This sounds joyful.  She picked up some random hat out of several, it seems.  Maybe there was a scattering of paper birthday hats, and in a carefree moment she just grabbed one and tossed it to the wind.

She picked up the hat and tossed it into the lake!  – Okay, now she has a bone to pick with either that hat or that hat’s owner.  She picked that one for a reason.

She picked up her hat and tossed it into the lake!  – Oh man!  Angst.  Ugly hat?  Hat that flops over her eyes so she can’t see where she’s going and makes her run into low hanging branches?  Whatever the reason she wants to be rid of THAT particular hat.

She picked up his hat and tossed it into the lake!  – She’s pissed.  You don’t toss somebody else’s hat into the lake unless you are royally pissed.   That guy had better watch out, he may be next.

 So what did this little exercise do for me?  Scared the heck out of me, that’s what!  If even the tiniest words are so important, how can I ever hope to clean my manuscript to the point of perfection? 

Answer – I can’t.  But I can try.  I can pay attention to word choice, look for consistency, ingest the feeling of each sentence word by word.  And I can find myself some excellent beta readers who will do the same.  Bless those beta readers.

How about you?  Do you find yourself nitpicking over word choice, or distracted by poor word choice in the things you read?