I screw up so you don't have to

At the urging of my agent, I recently resurrected an old manuscript I wrote years ago for a line of women's action/adventure novels.

(Sidenote: If you don't know the story of my first ill-fated book deal, go here).

Before sending her the manuscript, I decided to do a thorough read-through to make any necessary updates while simultaneously seizing the opportunity to laugh at my younger writer self.

Though the writing was much more polished than I remembered, there were small things I opted to tweak throughout the story. Several minor characters were named for people who are no longer part of my life, so it seemed prudent to change those references to something more current.

In one such instance, I opted to change the name of a dog from "Herm" to "Bonzo."

A smart writer would use the advanced settings under Microsoft Word's "find" and "replace" feature and select "find whole words only" to avoid problems. It should look kinda like this:

The smart writer would then use "find next" after each change to ensure every edit is properly made.

That is not, however, what I did.

I was feeling lazy, and I simply clicked "find" and "replace all."

The result? Delightful lines like these:

• Lori had already stripped down to her tBonzoal underwear and was nestled in her sleeping bag in front of the stove.
•  "I’m not filling my tBonzos with bourbon and slugging it back like water if that’s what you mean."
• Josh answered by sliding his hand downward, over the plane of my abdomen, past the flimsy barrier of elastic at the top of my tBonzoal leggings.
• With the little tBonzoometer on my zipper pull now showing temperatures around 30-degrees Fahrenheit, it didn’t take spectacular powers of deduction to realize a 65-degree temperature shift might have an impact on the dogs.  
• “Look, under the circumstances, there’s only one thing we can do for your hypotBonzoia,” I told him, already fumbling with the zippers and buckles holding him inside his soggy clothes. 

I wrote that manuscript long before I made the switch to romantic comedy. I've gotta admit,  I've never laughed so hard at anything else I've written.

Got any good stories of edits gone awry? Please share!