the Village Knittiot

Yesterday at work I handed in a really big project. It was the first time I had written anything so lengthy for them and it turned into a bit of a monster. Not because it necessarily was a monster, but because I tend to have problems with perception and otherwise harmless little bunny rabbits turn into drooling, fanged beasts that want to crush my bones and eat my spleen. I’m also a bit of a perfectionist, but more on that later.

Over the course of a couple weeks, I have been slowly and anxiously plodding along on it. Making use of my time at work, but also worrying. Worrying that it wasn’t good enough. Worrying that I was about to fall flat on my face. Worrying that I didn’t know enough about dishwashers (yes, dishwashers) to write it or that my facts were all wrong! I even brought it home over the weekend, but fear induced procrastination talked me into just avoiding it instead.

This, in turn, led me to the 11th hour, which is usually where I do my best work. However, I forgot that my best work is usually preceded by a complete and total meltdown. So, on Monday night at 8:00 I finally went sobbing into Mr. Knittiot’s office to tell him why I shouldn’t be allowed to go on writing when everything that comes out of my mouth is such shit. Furthermore if I couldn’t write to save my life, maybe it was a sham of a life anyway. My husband is very patient. I appreciated this about him. I, myself? Not so patient. Well, maybe with others, just not so much when things of me are involved. He agreed to take a look at what I had (laughing when he asked me how much I had and I said 15 very bad pages after I made it sound like I’d been sitting staring at a blank screen for two weeks) and said he would be my editor for the evening.

I continued to write. He continued to bring in the tiniest of suggestions. A sentence structure here, a punctuation there. I kept telling him to feel free to be brutal. Please, if I need to change everything, tell me! I’m sure I need to change everything. But, of course, I didn’t have time to change everything so I accepted his minor suggestions at the rate of, oh, maybe one or two a page. And I kept asking him if he was sure. I went to bed at eleven, slept fitfully for five hours imagining my bosses looking at me wondering what in the hell I had been doing for two weeks. I got up at four and finished it off. Finally at about 9:30 that morning as I was going over things one final time before handing it in, my perception shifted. I got my objectivity back, and I could see that this wasn’t so bad. It would work. Might require some changes, but in general was good enough. It was okay.

When one of the owner’s of the company (he is spearheading this project) called me into his office later in the day to go over my document, I expected he would be satisfied. I thought he would suggest changes. But no. No. Not all. He was ecstatic. He couldn’t stop saying how wonderful it was. How I had an excellent future in the company and a bright career ahead of me. He used the word “perfect” (oh, the sweet, sweet sound of that word — it is like a drug to me) and I just sat there in complete bliss. The words of my dear husband, who told me that even my crap is pretty good (which I am working very hard to believe, my love!), bouncing about my brain.

And to top it all off… Mr. Knittiot has a job interview in Philly on Thursday morning. What a week. Now, if we can just sell the house…

p.s. — don’t worry, I have not intention of selling my soul and my desire for teaching to embrace a career as a copywriter. Been down that path and the road to hell has been paved by Marketing professionals…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 31st, 2005 at 6:16 am and is filed under this Writing Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.