Hello Reader,
In the last few weeks, I've gotten a form of this question a few times in my inbox:
"My biggest block is fear of failure. What if I mess up? What if I let the designer down and miss errors? And really, am I good enough??"
I struggle deeply with this particular fear. I developed an unhealthy, maladaptive form of perfectionism by the time I was a young adult, with all the trappings of deep anxiety, worry around making mistakes, fear of what people would say about me and rejection if I failed.
Learning how to knit again as an adult helped me overcome a lot of this. The first time I frogged something I was surprised at my reaction. You mean, we can redo it? Really? As many times as needed? What parts of life give us an unlimited re-do? Very few. This made me laugh out loud when I realized the potential.
I learned how to enjoy my knitting mistakes, noticed them when they happened, didn't beat myself up, found fixing them fun. I even made a big pile of bulky single wool into not one, not two, but three different sweaters, frogging the finished products when they failed: one had really poor fit, one had too big of a gauge to hold the shape—it bagged out dramatically by midday. Eventually the yarn became my favorite Texas Winter Coat, a winner for me on so many levels. The yarn and my self-esteem survived the frogging.
When I became a technical editor, my noticing skills and desire to make things better were a strength. I definitely wanted patterns I worked on to be as close to perfect as possible. But what about missing things? I had the (cringe-y) pleasure this week to dig into some of the pattern drafts I edited in 2016, and hoo-boy was that a trip back in time to when I was a very inexperienced editor with great intentions.
I made mistakes. I missed things, pretty regularly. In one of my first jobs, I was chastised by a client for missing that the cuff on a sleeve didn't have the correct stitch count for the pattern multiple. I can still feel that gut-slug, that oh-no feeling, that I should have checked that. I felt very responsible to my clients and got a little neurotic, spending way too much unpaid time, checking and re-checking, just so I would catch everything.
And then I had an editing mentor (not in knitting) ask me two really great questions:
1. Why did you miss that?
2. What could you do so you don't miss it again?
This changed everything for me. I stepped back from tearing up my insides with regret and shame and guilt and apologies and trying harder. I answered the questions.
1. I was moving too fast, trying to finish the pattern within my estimate. Sleeves were last.
2. It wasn't on my checklist.
Friends, dear newer editors, you will make mistakes. You are not going to be perfect, so stop thinking that is even possible. You will miss things, you will possibly insert errors (a particular type of terror for me). You won't be able to not make them. Expect to make mistakes, embrace them, set yourself up for what you will do when you miss.
At the root of all this is an implied impossible standard: that we will find every possible issue and error in a pattern in the first edit, maybe even in one pass, maybe even that there would be no need for a second edit, a review or even a proof. This is delusional.
We truly do want our clients' publications to be the best they can be; we want to do right by those who are paying us. But, hey, it's just not healthy to insist on absolute perfection in our work, both of ourselves or in others. We are human, we are only one person, with one perspective, one set of skills and experience. Expecting this standard over ourselves (science shows) sets ourselves up for the mental stress where we miss actually more things.
Humans learn by making mistakes—it's our number one teacher and how we learned and grew from the time we were small. Fact are, that hasn't changed even though we are grown. The less indimidated and worried about doing a perfect job, the better an editor we can be.
A good checklist protects against mistakes.
I talked this week with the lovely people in Learn to Tech Edit Knitting about the checklist tango. The course is a great place to practice making mistakes without doing it on client work, and I have challenged them to build a checking checklist that is all their own, by noticing what they miss.
What can you add to your checklist from your work this week? A thorough checklist works like bowling lane bumpers, it keeps my editing going towards the pins, heading for a score. It is definitely a living document—always being added to.
I sometimes talk myself out of using my checklist when I am tired and just can't be bothered because I know how to edit (oh, my ego flare-ups!), and that's when I get into trouble. How about you? Is your checklist your secret power?
Rest and repetition help.
Walking away from an edit for a spell and then returning after a rest, even after a few minutes, will help you see more things. I also edit on different mediums, both paper and screen. If time allows, I edit over several days, doing multiple passes with breaks between, and then doing that final pass before sending back a first edit on a different day so my brain is fresh.
Reframe the second edit.
First edits can be messy. The page can be full of markings and strikethroughs. The more crowded the page, the less I see. I often will stop editing, ask the designer to clear the deck, apply all the edits, and then let me back in to sweep up. I learned this from colleague Annie Lin: instead of asking what I missed that first time, I ask myself what else I can find. I treat that second, third, fourth pass as a treasure hunt: looking for typos, double spaces, spelling errors that spellcheck missed, and missing colons or periods. I am still working on being enthusiastic about all these, but I definitely let them roll on through the process as a win.
Have a mistake policy.
Prepare your clients for the event. Set up what you will say and do when you miss something big or small. Will you correct it on your own time/dime? How will you talk about it in your onboarding and agreement? Thinking about this before it happens will not only care for you, but also manage expectations with your clients.
Remember your value.
Any professionally-edited pattern is a better pattern. If we are experienced, we’ve seen hundreds of patterns, and we know what to look for that designers can’t see in their own work. When I’m having a hard day, I open the tally in my PDF editor and look at how many things I did catch. I have learned that perfectionism can be adapative, it is a superpower in our work, but it needs boundaries so it doesn’t tip into something that harm me.
It's okay to have a reasonable expectation of ourselves, and that expectation should be to do our best with the tools, skills, and knowledge we have. We can only do our best, and I can guarantee you, it won't be perfect.
People often quote Oscar Wilde related to making mistakes, but they usually don't get the whole line from his (ironically) failure of a play Vera:
Prince Paul (shrugging his shoulders): Experience, the name men give to their mistakes. I never commit any.
Well, okay then. May we never be too princely proud to admit our mistakes, nor too afraid to make them, but realize our client's errors are our livelihood, sometimes we miss, and that is how we learn.
Love and yarn,
Sarah
p.s. What have you missed lately? Hit reply and I will commiserate with you.
p.p.s. More reading on this topic if you are interested:
Fail intelligently (Harvard Business School): https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/failing-well
Adaptive perfectionism: The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Morgan Schafler (affiliate link)