I take a job copy editing and find comfort in the culling of words, the monitoring of space. It’s easy to love something until your flaws are pointed out to you—the things you let slip by.
I pull out errors in everything I read, feel thwarted, let down when something passes my scrutiny. We don’t all, apparently, make mistakes.
When the job ends, I bury with it my red pen; my compulsion to be right. Re-draft and revision.
I begin to build new dreams outside the wainscoting of words.
Maybe all disappointments are trials in disguise.
We sit at a tall table in a cafe listening to the cacophony of coffee-making beneath the music that plugs our ears, ideas budding above our own mindful detritus.
Throw it out, break it down, rip it all apart. Shed.
Then pull your wooly sweater around your shoulders as the breeze blows in.
It’s either that or close the window.
Nothing I’d strike out with my red pen here, if I was impertinent enough to wield it. You say so much with so few words.
After reading this, I want you to edit my writing. I edit all of the time but cannot catch my own mistakes. Great post.