Making Mistakes? You're Only Human.
As Babe Ruth is supposed to have said, "Don't let the fear of striking out hold you back."
Wait a moment… I meant to ask you:
All mistakes…
Small errors are usually fixable. A typo, a misplaced comma, an incorrect attribution…all fixable whether you do it while editing or someone points it out to you.
But the important thing is that you learn from all your mistakes. And you fix it.
So, the Third Mistake I made during my first paid writing job:
When you work for someone, even as a freelancer, you might need to wait for an editor’s approval, then a client’s, or a team of clients’.
Delays happen, and in those cases, while waiting for approval I did let my editors know. But I could not speed them along aside from texting, emailing, and nagging!
Time, however, keeps rolling along. And I’m not good at budgeting my time.
Time budgeting, management, or whatever you want to call it, is crucial in freelancing. It was great to have my first paid writing job, but it took time away from other commitments: A course I was taking and the part-time job that I quickly—maybe too quickly, gave up!
And the Time that I put into this first paid writing job, stretched and stretched, so the money I earned from it, equaled about as much as my part-time job.
So, as it turned out, I did not replace this part-time job with a well-paid freelance writing one.
I was able to get all the coursework in on time. It was not perfect, but my work for it scored well. And comments about it were encouraging.
But I really wished I’d spent more time on the course.
Was it a mistake to take this first paid writing job? I keep wondering about that, but I learned so much from it!
So what do you learn in school?
In grade school… Nope, all the way through post-college, errors you make are marked with red and you are given a score or a letter grade reflecting your mistakes. Or your closeness to perfection.
So, I’d like you to unlearn everything you learned about making mistakes. A grade is just a number. It doesn’t say anything about the work you put into the learning you did to get to the test. Maybe all it means is you need to learn some more.
You can’t learn new stuff unless you try. And when you try new things, you’ll make mistakes. Guaranteed.
Hey! What I’ve learned while writing this is that I’m hanging on to my work too long!
What I’m reading:
Mick Herron’s “Slow Horses” books because they’re fun to read. And because we’ve been watching it. And it’s got the best theme song: