Perfectionism can be a great benefit and a great trial at any given time. Writing and illustrations are no exceptions. I read and reread the text of my written works trying to make sure the story is conveyed clearly, that punctuation is correct, that the story flows, that the characters are acting in character, that… I think you get the idea.
Now, rereading until you are sick of the very words you have written is an idea that is promoted over and over again. If you want to save money in self-publication by not hiring an editor, it is essential to make as sure as you possibly can that you have no errors of any kind.
I have read more than a few books that caused me to look to see if they were self-published or would have been likely to have gone through professional proofreaders. There is an expectation that those doing the job themselves will miss errors in their own work. Yet, more often than one might think, it has turned out to be professional proofreaders missing what seem to be glaring errors. (If I cover this subject in more detail, it would have to be in another post.) My point is that these errors can be jarring to the reader and make them question the quality of the writing, as such, good editing and proofreading are crucial.
Are there any books that you have been shocked managed to make it through a professional editing process? Leave a comment below.
However, this drive to look for any and every possible error, ad nauseam, can be a pitfall. Been there. Done that. I will probably do it again, but hopefully to a lesser degree.
Here is what can happen. Should I shorten that sentence, so I don’t lose my reader? If I shorten that sentence, will I have many short sentences set together making my writing sound choppy rather than smooth and flowing, catching my reader up and pulling them along? Is that a better place for a semicolon or a comma? Is it a good place for either and, if so, which conveys the meaning I am looking for? Are there too many commas? If I reduce commas, that gives me more periods. More periods mean more short sentences. More short sentences make my writing sound choppy… and so on and so forth. Enter the infinite loop.
These are the makings of headaches, self-doubt, stagnation, and tears. I have not gotten to tears yet, but I can see how it could easily progress to that point.
Illustrations can produce similar difficulties. My illustrator created the line drawings for “Boys Will Be Boys” and I colored them in. I wanted to avoid filling in the colors via computer because I feel the colors have a, somehow, artificial look to them. I don’t care for the computer generated look of many illustrations I see in books nowadays. I love the older books with watercolor, oil, chalk, or colored pencil illustrations.
Oils, though one of the mediums I am better with, wouldn’t keep the original ink lines I wanted to preserve. Though I like working with chalk, I am still learning how to handle the medium well, so that was off the table. Colored pencils offer their own set of challenges. I can be very precise with my application of color in one area and not in another, while my ability to blend with them is almost non-existent. Watercolors? Don’t make me laugh. I couldn’t seem to get a grasp of how to mix the paint to a consistency that flowed without running. I do like the look of watercolors, but handle colored pencils best. Watch the spinning hourglass. Wait for it… watercolor pencils.
My medium was chosen. Now, I had to copy the ink drawings, which my illustrator provided, to watercolor paper. It was a fiasco. First, the paper was too thick to go through the printer. I got thinner paper. The printer ink ran when I added the water to the colored pencil. I tried tracing over the copy with pen ink. It was tedious, and my hand was not nearly steady enough nor my eye sure enough. One child ended up with a smushed nose. I even tried using construction paper, but the water, color, and the paper reacted badly together.
In my practice to learn how to blend with watercolor pencils, I had used plain printer paper and the ink lines didn’t run. What did happen was that the paper wrinkled when I used a wash. Finally, someone suggested that I treat these wrinkles as I would wrinkles in cloth; iron them. It worked, but not to my perfectionist standards. I moved through it and came to realize that it actually worked quite well, considering. If you have any suggestions that might have worked in that situation, leave a comment below
Now, there was also the difficulty of the fact that the original lines from the line drawings were, naturally, blurred from the coloring process. I was left with something I found incredibly distasteful; Photoshop. Yuck. I found myself having to fix spots where the color had slipped just a little over the line into another color and darkening the lines that had been lightened in the coloring.
There is a feature in Photoshop that perfectionists will love and hate. This feature is the zoom tool. You can magnify an image many times over in order to make your edits more precise, thus reducing the likelihood of errors. This magnification will also show you any and all previously invisible “errors.” The perfectionist can now see a plethora of “mistakes”, less than beautiful areas, in their image. In other words, it’s a perfectionist’s nightmare.
I had to learn to let these go with the understanding that, unless someone took a magnifying glass to the book, readers wouldn’t see these supposed errors. If I had not learned how to do this, the book would never have gotten published. Instead, I have my book published and have moved on to the publicity and marketing phase. That is a whole other scenario.
This does not mean that I am promoting giving up quality. There are enough products nowadays that do exactly that. We should strive to put out our very best work, without letting our striving stop the work from being done at all. In summary, my fellow writers; remember that there can be too much of a good thing. Perfectionism is one of them. Shoot for the moon (perfection), so that when you miss, (and you will), you land among the stars. Most importantly, enjoy the wonder.
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