You can count on Maple Valley-based writer Diana Savage to write or copy edit a newsletter.

Just don’t count on her to count it accurately.

In her story titled “The Numbers Game,” published in “Chicken Soup for the Soul: Boost Your Brain Power,” Savage details the various methods she employs in order to effectively work with math, sometimes to comedic effect.

The story also serves to inform people who had seemingly inexplicable struggles with math that there is, in fact, a scientific explanation.

Savage said she suffers from a learning disorder called dyscalculia, which affects a person’s ability to deal with math. Although she said she has not been professionally diagnosed, many of the symptoms and warning signs, such as having good reading, writing and speaking skills but little in math, she has noticed since childhood when she had trouble finding the right hymn number in church.

“I’ve known all my life (it was a problem),” she said. “But I first became aware of the term five years ago. It as an enormous relief. It meant I wasn’t stupid. It’s a learning disability.”

Savage said that many people like herself compensate for their poor math skills sometimes in creative ways.

“I’ve learned to keep my check book in pencil because I am very creative on how to make errors,” she said. “I (sometimes) subtract deposits or add withdrawals. I balance it once a month to the penny, but it’s a rare occurrence when I don’t have an error to track down. Keeping my register in pencil makes it a lot easier to have a neat register. The other way to compensate is keeping a running total (while shopping) so I wouldn’t be shocked at the cash register. I do that by rounding to the nearest 50 cents.”

In an effort to help other people suffering from dyscalculia become aware of the problem and finds effective ways to deal with it, “The Numbers Game” provides anecdotes of how she had trouble doing basic math, such as giving her exact age to someone on the phone based on her birth year.

“I want other people to know if they struggle with math it’s a learning disability,” she said. “They can get specific help for that and not give in to the accusation that they have been told that they are stupid.”

Savage concludes the story with how she eventually took up Sudoku, which she said helped her tell the difference between a pre-printed number and a hand written number.

“While I’ll never be a threat to Sheldon Cooper, my confidence in being able to tame numbers has increased,” she said.

Savage has been an author since 1972, with 85 articles and one book, “Who Says Winners Never Lose: Profiting from Life’s Painful Detours,” to her credit.

She previously wrote a story for a book in the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series called “All in the Family.” The story, “A Wedding to Die For,” deals with the death of her father-in-law at her daughter’s wedding.

One of the themes in her stories and writing in general, Savage said, is to find “wry ways we can identify with each other and know they’re not alone.”

In addition to her work as a copy editor, Savage also runs the website WoundedChristians.com, which helps Christians who have struggled with their faith, as well as savagesisters.wordpress.com, a financial advice blog.

“Chicken Soup for the Soul: Boost Your Brain Power” can be purchased online at www.chickensoup.com. or at amazon.com