“We have to have the guts to make mistakes.”
Those are my art teacher’s words. It gets me thinking. And it’s very true, because without mistakes, where’s the adventure of life? There is none.
Too often you–yes, you!–are stuck in your shell. No matter who you are, no matter what you do, at some point in your life you just want to be less noticeable. Maybe you’re a bad dancer. Or you wrote an embarrassing answer on your last Japanese test. Or you’re awkward with human contact.
Every day we feel we’re not doing something right. We instinctively shrink back from whatever we’re doing if we feel like it’s imperfect, or if there’s a mistake. So what? No person in this world has never made a mistake, whether they like it or not. Even some of the most confident people I know aren’t so confident about mistakes sometimes. Follow the Wikipedia motto and be bold!
We apply this to writing as well. So much of the time, too much, I hear people say they don’t want to make so many mistakes in a first draft, or they can’t stand Write or Die because things aren’t perfect the first time around. There is plenty of time to develop a more precise style of writing, but few first drafts are readable. I’m horrible at them. There’s ugly word padding everywhere, too many adjectives and adverbs, but so what? There’s plenty of time to make those better…later.
Not to say you should procrastinate on editing or anything. But don’t shy away from imperfections. They’re what make us.
- Ann X.
69,084/365,000
(I’m on fire! 
)
