I had a really interesting experience with typos recently. After much bracing of fortitude, I typed an intro to an interview I did with the J.J. Steinfeld (who, for the record, was the delightfully cooperative, friendly, and gave some absolutely fascinating responses), felt really good about it, and sent it to my publisher--only to discover, a few hours later, that the intro had upwards of six or seven errors.
I made up a better version (which, still, is probably full of invisible errors, though I haven't found it yet), sent it--and noticed later that the message itself (one sentence) had a very obvious typo in it.
Of course, I haven't even touched on the monster that is the first draft. I belong to that majority of writers who produces decent material only by severe persistence... no matter that when that first draft is finished, I feel like Motzart in Amedeus. For a long time I felt really bad about this, until I read this excerpt on William Gass awhile ago--undoubtably one of the finest American stylists of all time. (Ironically, I picked it up off the wikipedia.
He says: "I write slowly because I write badly. I have to rewrite everything many, many times just to achieve mediocrity."
It was like therapy.
Of course, most of what I write here is sloppy, unedited, etc, so I guess I'll never learn.
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