Rambling a little today, about odd thoughts….

I expect more of myself than I do other people. Nobody gets more upset at me than me over silly mistakes. I dwell on them. And I do expect to fix my own blunders and not have somebody else bail me out. I have this problem with my writing, too.  I don’t want it to be seen until I’m satisfied with it.

On my first day at a new job many years ago, I did something backward and caused a big confusion in the resulting data until we figured out what I had done. So I  logged on and made the necessary corrections.

Unfortunately, someone else in the office decided to fix it ‘for me’. So – you guessed it – it was there, in reverse, the next day. Confused? You bet! But we worked it out and I fixed it again. And this time, they knew I fixed it.

I was really fussing at myself, worried that the new company would think I was a total idiot, when the chief accountant stopped by my desk.

“Had a bad first day, didn’t you?”

I nodded my head.

“Do you know what happened?”

I nodded my head again.

He smiled. “Just don’t do it again, okay?” – and he walked away from me.

Relief flooded my brain. I wasn’t in trouble. I had fixed it and it was okay. And I knew how to keep it from happening again.

I’ve kept that lesson close to my heart ever since. Errors can be fixed. Sure, it might take a little time and effort, but corrections can be made and we learn what not to do again. Yes, there are exceptions, if you have a job where people’s lives depend on your initial action. (I have great admiration and sympathy for those people.)

Unlike facing a new job alone, writers rely on friends for critique and editing. Very few writers think they turn out perfect work the first time.  We know that when we read our own work, even the simplest things slip past us.The story’s there, but, oh, there are typos, tense switches, misspellings and many other things.  We don’t catch how we spelled our hero’s name three different ways in the first chapter. We don’t realize we used the word that 12 times in one page.

So we ask others to double check our work. As we go back and correct the errors that others have identified, we learn and understand what we do most often. When you get something back from a critique group with new slip-ups, it’s a feeling of accomplishment. Hopefully it means you’ve rid yourself of some old habits.

We dabble in self-publishing. We submit and get rejected. We enter contests and don’t win. It’s all a learning process.

Our writing group often gets new writers that really work hard to improve their skills, as well as more experienced ones that are still polishing. We often recognize their efforts at the end of the year with humorous awards,  certificates of achievement or simply verbal acknowledgement. It’s a pat on the back, we hope, and a way of letting them know we’ve noticed.

Do you do this with fellow writers? Maybe you should!