The Joy of Knowing You Probably Won’t Get it Right the First Time

re·vise (/rəˈvīz/) verb: to re-examine and make alterations to

“Everybody makes mistakes / Everybody has those days / Everybody knows what I’m talkin’ ‘bout / Everybody gets that way (that’s right)”

Hannah Montana slash Miley Cyrus said it best. Nobody’s perfect, I’ve gotta work it, again and again ’til I get it right.

I will not apologize for starting this out with a Hannah Montana reference.

When I was younger, I certainly took comfort in the idea that, although I felt like a failure and a fraud — that I didn’t know how to be human the way everyone else seemed to be doing it so well — there wasn’t actually anyone who was perfect, even if it seems like it. I felt comforted hearing someone say that everybody has those days when they just can’t win — that I’m not a freak of nature for that, but instead, just a person.

Now, as an adult, I frequently revise — myself, my writing, my brain, my opinions, my perspectives. If I’m not working through how to reframe a life experience in therapy, I am editing my work in an article, or reframing my understanding of an issue as I research it.

Many people I speak with seem to hate editing or hate therapy. I get that. I am not without those feelings sometimes. We all have those days. But when I find people talking about how they really dislike these things, I have a lot of compassion, because I think about how difficult self-examination and revision is.

There’s something about examining ourselves that pulls the trigger on our fear and self-loathing, that makes us feel more flawed than possible, I think — makes us feel like we’re stepping backwards instead of stepping into better light to see and be ourselves in.

Until a few months ago, I thought I was a shitty writer and a shitty journalist. Don’t ask me why. Despite all evidence, I was self-critical to a fault. I had little if any self confidence about a craft I’ve been working at my whole life, because I saw what other people were doing and couldn’t stop thinking that they’d somehow found the magic key to doing it perfectly the first time. As if nothing finished ever went through a process. But even though I thought I wasn’t good, it never kept me from trying to get better.

In fact, I’ve always loved getting edits from editors I work with. And I’ve loved therapy at least for the last 10 years of my life. Neither editors giving me feedback or my therapist helping me to see how I’m thinking or acting in a way that’s hurting me has ever made me feel like I don’t want their advice ever again. It gives me a beat to sit with myself and find a new path.

Seeing a red mark, a deletion of a sentence, or a question for me on a page doesn’t feel like an assessment that I’m not good at what I do, or that I can’t be good, the same way that my therapist telling me that something I’m doing is harming me doesn’t make me feel like I’m a hopeless case. All of these things, I feel, are something hopeful — like being showered in party confetti of I-can-do-better-than-this — a way to grow, a way to become more skillful, more in tune with myself.

I keep all the journals I’ve ever had on a shelf in my room. One of my favorites in particular is this one from senior year of high school that I look at frequently to remember that while I am always the person I’ve been, I’ve also changed a lot. And it’s at least partly because I have written and written and rewritten again and again until I get it “right.” This journal entry in particular makes me laugh because it’s so quintessentially me. “I’M SO STRESSED” in all caps could probably start out every journal entry ever at any point in my life.

Perhaps I have my editor at my school newspaper all throughout high school, James, who returned even the articles I thought I’d written and researched without fault or flaw or grammatical error with plenty of red marks and exclamation points, to thank for that — or maybe my 12th grade English teacher Mrs. M. Or maybe it was my freshman year professor Laurie. Either way, all of these mentors taught me that edits weren’t something to be afraid of — instead, edits are something to let you know where you went astray, what road you wanted to be on in the first place, and how to get there without falling off a cliff.

By my freshman year of college, I’d gotten very good at taking constructive criticism and revising draft after draft of my writing until I got it to where I wanted it to be. Laurie had a unique strategy for teaching new college students how to properly write at a college level. Her strategy was to give us about a month to turn in drafts of essays again and again, mark them up with edits and what needed to be more clear or more defined, until by the sixth or seventh or even tenth revision for some people, we had an A-level essay to turn in. She did it a few times, and most of the people in my class hated it. It felt like a waste of time, they said. “Why not just give us a C the first time if it was really so bad?”

But I, being myself, was elated at the opportunity to try my hand at a nearly-perfect essay until it was what I, and my professor, knew it could be.

D on’t get me wrong — I’m not saying that grades or perfection aren’t fake. They are. The point is not the grade. And objectively, what she thought of as an A could of course be a C to another professor or person reading the same writing. The point is that Laurie gave us time to work out all of the kinks and bumps in our writing instead of defining us by the first time we tried our hand at something we were new at. The point is that she taught us that there is always room for growth, forgiveness, and recognizing where and when we veered off course.

After that class, I rarely got anything below an A on any essay in college. And it wasn’t because I was just magically good at writing. It was because I had someone who cared enough to show me how much effort things actually take.

When I took my first and last course solely focused on writing my senior year, a class on writing personal essays, I still thought that my writing was bad. But I was out of practice writing about myself after spending four years writing about everything except for myself. I had written about Buddhism, Judaism, the Holocaust and other things I cared about and was interested in for my Religion major, but almost never things about my life. So I was surprised when, after writing some deeply personal essays about falling in love with a girl who didn’t love me, coming out in high school and moving to New York, and feeling that the writing was not only intensely shitty but that I was telling my story incorrectly, my writing professor (who herself is a professional writer with a successful career) told me that my work needed little revision, and that I should trust my own voice. She said it was clear I had already done the editing myself. I think that, ultimately, it was what I needed, even though that had not been the advice I was seeking. I needed someone to tell me to trust myself.

We did revise my personal essays a little, but she ultimately communicated to me that I was a strong enough writer who already knew what I was doing and should give myself permission myself to let my story unfold on the page, then edit without judgment. I didn’t really believe her, even when she asked me if I wanted to be in her graduate courses later that year. I told her I wasn’t going to grad school for writing, and that I wasn’t going to grad school at all. She told me that was too bad, but that she looked forward to reading my personal essays in outlets and in print someday. I brushed it off as perhaps her being nice.

Y ears later, after editing myself over and over again, I realize I do know how to tell my own story — and it’s because I am always giving myself room to grow and improve, because I don’t fear recreation or think of it as an indictment that my initial try was bad or unworthy.

If none of this feels relevant to you, know that you don’t have to be a writer to revise or edit. I practice revision with other things all the time. So do you, I bet. I revise my Etsy cart and my grocery list until it makes sense for what I actually need and want right now. I revise the relationships and friendships I have in my life, ending friendships and relationships when they don’t fit into my life the way I thought they did, or when I need something different now. I’ve revised my sexuality a million times at this point. I revised my gender, for fuck’s sake. I’d told myself I was a woman my whole life until I stopped trying to edit myself into something that made others comfortable.

I look at what I’m doing now that used to work for me, or that I at least thought worked at one point, and figure out how to adjust it to what actually works for me now. So do you. And it’s scary, I bet. But you do it eventually, even if infrequently, because you need to. Because eventually it gets more frustrating to stay the same than it would be to change.

edit (\ˈe-dət\) verb: to prepare for publication or public presentation

To edit literally means that something is not ready for others yet, because we are still in the process of creating it. This applies to writing much the same way it applies to ourselves and to our lives. It doesn’t have to be something horrible. I mean, how beautiful is it that we can revisit our former selves, thoughts, and desires and meet ourselves at new junctures to say “this is no longer right?” To revise means to revisit. And how wonderful is it that we can talk to people we love and realize that pronouns or gender identities or career aspirations we once thought were ours no longer work for us and change those things about our lives? That we can revisit and meet ourselves where we are currently at?

I’m not saying that you should feel bad if you still hate editing or therapy or any kind of self-examination. It might feel bad. Or hard. Because it’s really human to just want things to be okay the first time, or without having to try at all. But it’s not realistic. And often it’s the things that we are hardest on ourselves about that are actually the things we should be soft towards ourselves about — that we should be flowing water smoothing ourselves over like river rocks instead of knives at our chests about not being our fullest selves yet.

And the sooner we can understand that, the sooner we can have compassion for ourselves when we need to look at the way we’ve done something that isn’t “perfect” and try again — not full of hatred or disappointment with ourselves, but with the understanding that we’re going to be messy and confused, or simply wrong sometimes, and have patience with ourselves.

N ow, as I write an article or essay as an adult and a professional writer and journalist, I find myself eager to get feedback on what to cut or how to make it better. For the most part, I’ve been extraordinarily lucky to have editors who have made that process pleasant and collaborative — asking me questions that I can think about and answer in the piece, or telling me where I need to be more specific in my citations. The edits don’t make me feel bad about myself or communicate that I can’t do this thing that I love.

Instead, the chance to edit and revise gives me the ability to do something that I never get to do in any other area of life when I fuck up or simply want another chance.

Editing gives me the opportunity to try again. To know there probably wasn’t such a thing as perfect to begin with, but that if I’m willing to put in effort and have patience with myself, I can get pretty damn close.

Yesterday I needed to send my friend Ella a birthday gift and card in the mail, but the envelope I’d gotten that seemed to be the correct size didn’t quite fit everything inside.

After spending ten minutes trying to shove it in, I tried to find another envelope, then tried to make another envelope. Finally, my girlfriend suggested I just gently rip the envelope open, slip the book in, and tape the envelope back together — I did, and it worked. Taking a step back, working out another way to do something, and trying again…a classic case of things working out better than they did before. Anyway, what a metaphor for my life, and a metaphor for taking the time to try something another way.

All of us are struggling with something.

And I think there’s actually a lot of joy in that, because as corny as it sounds, it means there’s something we’re still striving towards. We are not going backwards. Our feet are on the pedal, moving forward, as long as we’re ready to make another attempt.

So no, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to rework and revise. It can be nerve-wracking. But it doesn’t mean you weren’t good enough in the first place.

It just means there are more ways to become more yourself.