Oh hey, it’s me again!
Yesterday on Leap Day, I launched my first paid post. These will come out on Tuesdays and will offer a closer, if occasionally messier, peek under the hood of process. Creativity is anything but polished or perfect. The missteps, the trial and error, the boredom, the doubt, and the sudden surges of inspiration are all part of it. They ARE it.
So today, dear readers, let’s talk about imperfection.
Last week when we were in Telluride, I ran into a friend from Santa Fe. We exchanged surprised greetings, and then he told me how much he’s been enjoying ‘work in process.’ I always love to hear kind words, and I’ve gotten better about really taking them in. I was basking in this tiny flash of momentary glory, when he said, “Can I give you some constructive feedback?”
Uh oh.
Is there anyone on the planet who doesn’t reflexively cringe at those words (enlightened Zen monks and robots aside)?
I nodded, not meaning it.
He went on, “In every post, I find at least one typo.”
Inside I died a little. I have been a journalist and writer and editor for almost 30 years. I am hardly a perfectionist in life (ask my husband), but I HATE typos. Despise them. Suddenly I was seven again, my 2nd grade teacher telling me that I was “careless” with my math problems. I moved too fast, she wrote in my report card (nailed it), and I needed to slow down (good luck). Even then, I cared a lot more about words than numbers, and her comment burned in my brain. I never wanted to be careless again.
My problem isn’t that I’m bad at spelling or punctuation, it’s that I’m a stickler with my sentences, and I will tinker till the end of time to get the language and rhythm just right. (I’ve edited this paragraph 3 times already in 3 minutes; and yes, I know there is a run-on—intentional.) When you constantly refine phrases, that most readers will never notice or care about, it’s not a question of whether you introduce a typo, it’s when. And how many.
Then my friend said, “So you know there’s this program called Grammarly?” and I wanted to crawl into a hole right there on the spot.
I like and respect this friend. I’m a grown-up and a professional and I should be glad for his advice. I truly believe he has my best interests at heart.
So what was my problem? I’d been trying to get this newsletter started for months, even years. I’d thought about it, wondered about it, resisted it. Finally, one day in early January, for no obvious reason, the ideas in my mind aligned, and I started writing. ‘Work in process’ was born. I not only knew what I wanted to say but also how to say it. I always do my best writing from the inside. I have to feel it. But being a journalist has taught me that sometimes you have to crank out a deadline, and other times you get to let the writing tell you when it’s time.
I told my friend this. It sounded sort of lame. Like, how hard is it to spellcheck? But I’m also trying to keep this newsletter on a schedule, in its right size, not taking over my life but slotted in with all the other writing I’m doing right now. By its very definition, it’s not supposed to be perfect.
It’s about process.
Back in Santa Fe, I wrote my newsletter, eyeballed it twice for errors, and uploaded it to Grammarly, which caught lots of 38 little mistakes that were easily fixed. The journalist in me was very pleased with herself. I pasted the proofread post into my substack and was about to publish when—I couldn’t help myself—I started tinkering again. I didn’t want to copy and paste it back into Grammarly—back and forth I would go all night—so I closed my eyes and hit “publish.” I won’t lie. I was thinking about how many typos my friend would find.
A few days later, I got an email from him, titled Sooooo Good. He’d copied one of my sentences into his email and wrote, “I love this!” It captured exactly the easy, loving warmth of spending a weekend in the mountains with friends and family. "I used Grammarly,” I replied proudly.
When his response came back right away, I couldn’t stop smiling. He got it, he really did:
I wasn’t going to mention it. . . because it’s not important. . . but I found zero typos 😊.
Your writing is beautiful, and the ideas and meaning are even better.
What I’m trying to say is there’s a place for perfect, polished prose and a time to let your words fly out into the world, just a little wild and rough around the edges, and land where they’re meant to (dangling preposition: intentional). As my wise friend Katie M. told me on our ski up the mountain the other morning, hidden in the word imperfection is I’m perfect.
Keep going, spinning your perfectly imperfectly yarns. When they’re true on the inside, they’ll hit their mark out there (mixed metaphor: too tired to fix).
Yours in imperfection,*
katie
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*With deep thanks to CB for the inspiration this week!
Loving your newsletter and excited to read your book. As an editor, I always notice typos. BUT when the piece of writing is a blog post (often meant to be more freeform, more casual, kinda stream of consciousness, right?), and the voice and tone flow and the words resonate with me, I truly do not care at all about a misspelled word here and there, or a comma splice or whatever. And I’d be willing to bet I’m not the only one. I say ditch the Grammarly :)
Loved this! And also LOVED spotting a typo :) the imperfections are what separates the real from the inauthentic. Grammarly, ChatGPT, AI - so what? Real writers make real errors but real writers also bring spirituality and emotion and that counts for far more than a well written sentence.