perfectionism

I often see specially made fraternity shirts around campus with this written on the back, and it always makes me giggle: "Grove City College...where your best hasn't been good enough since 1876." Just a little pretext for my perfectionism rant.

I wonder sometimes how normal it is to be highly embarrassed about a short story or paper or essay you've written, or at least embarrassed about sending it in to be read by someone. No matter how many times you've edited, changed, or reworked whatever it is. I am cringing within myself thinking of The Quad editors reading the short story that I wrote last semester for Creative Writing. I like the story. I mean, I like it pretty well. I didn't want to send anything else in to see if it would get accepted, just this. But man, I already feel silly for having to send in a second copy because last night I remembered that I changed a name within the story but didn't remember to change it everywhere in the story. What's hilarious is that the senior and junior editors are two really good friends of mine, so I shouldn't be that embarrassed, but I'm still recoiling within myself at my typos. Oh well. I would like to experience some sort of satisfaction after writing something, and I do once I've spent a lot of time on something that I care about, but reading it two months later usually makes me cringe again, just a little. I guess all I can do is keep on trying, and realize that editing is 75% of good writing, or some other large percentage. That's what I've been told, anyway.

Starting next week, I'm going to be copy-editing for The Collegian and the first edition of the Law Society's Law Journal, which should be pretty interesting. I've been copy-editing for The Quad since last semester, and I have really enjoyed that. Editing things for typographical errors is exhilarating for me, which is probably weird. But the thing about it that helps keep it interesting is that most of the material I read is enjoyable...which might not be the case so much for the Law Journal. I have an article to edit for that this week and I have no idea what to expect. Maybe it will be great, who knows. I'm glad though that I'm getting a pretty good range of material to edit...law articles, newspaper articles, and literary essays, stories, and poems. I hope that it will help me out when I try to find a job this summer. I've been looking at all the entry-level publishing jobs I can find.

Okay, so in line with this whole perfectionism topic, I just had to let you know that I re-edited this post twice, just now. I crack myself up. Oh dear.