To Pen the Perfect Story

Last week, I submitted my article to The Editor. It was not just On Time, but early, to which he noted:

Thanks! I appreciate that you got this in on time....You'd be surprised how many people don't.

I never thought that someone doing an article for a publication wouldn't get it in on time, maybe even early. Now, I know there are plenty of reasons--esp. if one is writing while keeping a full-time job--but if one's chosen job is to write, getting one project done and out of the queue, to me, seems like the right thing to do.

Not only that, I already fact-checked it, for which he also thanked me.

This Editor's comments, in light of Dawno's recent musings on re-writes both here and here, and a Salman Rushdie interview about his new book on NPR this morning, got me to thinking again about how often those of us who write get stuck in a cycle of perfectionism--thus, never finishing anything!

Why, then, do we get so bloody stuck in what feels like a vat of mental molasses?

My sense is that, first, we are often convinced that writers like Rusdie are perfect people. We are convinced not necessarily by the writers themselves, but by the interviews that spotlight only them, and the p.r. surrounding the books that want to sell them. It is much easier to create the writer superstar than it is to say there were other folks behind the product. Yet that is indeed the case. In the best books written, one will often find an acknoledgements page, whereby the names of close friends and editors will be listed usually next to the word "thanks." Writing a Great Novel or Great Memoir never just happens. It goes thru re-reads and it goes thru an editor (or even a couple of editors.) Writing is often a collaborative process, with the writer providing the main ingredient, which is then tweaked here and there by trusted others.

However, that's not what well-intentioned (or are they?) writers' magazines and the plethora of writer's guides out there like to tell us. All that stuff that's out there that seems to want to help *you* become a Real Writer (not just someone scribbling on legal pads) often stress how editors are always far too busy and that first, second, and subsequent submissions must always be Pristene Products of Perfection--with great style, verve of language and nary a spelling error.

What I think is going on in these publications, though, is the assumption that many people who want to be writers aren't all that great--or more succinctly, really suck. There is the sense that they are writing the articles for the Least Common Denominator--the people who believe themselves to be writers but who could never take an english teacher's simple criticisms or revisions without getting their egos bruised.

This then sends a bunch of us other folks, who don't get all that upset when corrected, and who are probably pretty good at what we do, into fits of Perfectionism. We believe the "advice" that tells us a story has to be perfect before it leaves our house because editors don't have time for us. We will never have the opportunity to hear what needs to be revised, if anything, because editors are just too darned busy to be bothered with the likes of us. So, we go bonkers with re-writes to the point of being mired in a never-ending cycle of re-writedom. It can never be good enough. No matter what we do, the editors are going to hate us because they didn't get a perfect product suitable for immediate publication with no editing necessary. We believe it is us alone who will always get the Rejection Notice because we have been told by all the august folks in all those well meaning writers' magazines that we should just expect rejection and get on with it, admit we're awful and snivelling lowlife wormy newbies and start with little presses and unpaid articles.

B.S.!

For some of us, the biggest problem is learning to say "I've done my best, let the editor fix it if he/she thinks it needs it." The other problem is acknowledging that we might have hit A Particular Editor on a very bad day where he/she is rejecting everything. Or, perhaps he/she at Brand X Publications doesn't like us, but the editor at Brand Y will.

But it seems that it's always the Editor at Brand X that we fixate on--to our detriment. So we give up.

But we shouldn't.

Back in the '90's when I was slaving away as a mediocre (at best) art student, I had a professor pound this very valuable lesson into my head: It is important to create a good, healthy mental distance between one's work and one's ego. For those of us who take the advise or writer's magazines a little too much to heart, getting that healthy distance is necessary. Our egos tend to work in a way that we don't expect--we aren't hyper-inflated, but, rather hyper-deflated. It's not our work we are sensitive about as much as we are sensitive about who we are. It's not that we think we're perfect, but that we know we're imperfect. And we believe that those who are in the position to judge our work are somehow better than us. So, if we want to think that we aren't all that great, that maybe we *are* pulling off a big joke by convincing someone that we can write an article or story, then we should just go with the joke. Go for the giant ha-has of life and think we're pretty darned good at writing. And when we get a rejection, rather than saying "I knew it, I knew I sucked," think what the ego-driven mediorcres think--that it's just the jerky editor, not jerky me. Sure, we can be humble, maybe, and if the opportunity is there, ask the editor what didn't work--for him/her--in the piece. But don't make The Editor into Every Editor.

Nobody's perfect--not even editors.

So, I'm off to write another article on Ten Tips for Business Bloggers. I know something about blogging and a tad about business, and heard alot about both at the conference I was at last week, so, just for ha-has, I'm putting on the hat of Business Blogging Expert. Yeah, it's a tad big, but, hey, I'm just not that perfect ;-)