Wanna Get Curated? Don’t Whip It; Cure It.

The case for letting your work rest instead of rushing to hit publish. Oh, the errors you will catch.

Sometimes the early bird gets a mouth full of dirt.

What’s my least favorite moment? When I hit publish on an article I gave extra love to, slaved over, and with shaking fingers, sent into cyberspace. Only to realize I made the move ten minutes too soon.

That’s how long it would have taken to give the piece an extra once over.

That final check would have caught the mistakes that might explain why the editors didn’t select it for distribution. You know, curation.

Because if I saw the typo in the first sentence as soon as I reopened the article, and then caught the two missed words in the second paragraph. And wait, there’s more. Where’s the photo and what’s with the … OMG, this thing’s a mess.

Then I scan down and my stomach begins to curdle and it all becomes clear. You can bet the editors saw these glitches, too.

I’ll face palm, and then go looking for an antacid as I ask myself what have I done? I published the wrong document.

It seemed I’d started two articles with similar names. Had one finished and ready to go and after closing it for some reason, I looked at the clock. I wanted to get it out there early in the morning for East Coast readers and just sent it off. Without checking.

But when I compared the two stories I see that, no, I sent the correct story. It’s just, somehow, I’d made some last-minute errors, like I accidentally deleted the photo and must have hit return on that sentence, so it looked like I missed some words, and, oh, it doesn’t matter how I screwed up the rest of it. I should have given it a rest.

Or, as I like to say, let it cure.

I got the term from my daughter. I knew what she meant when she first described a problem with a garment she had designed.

The garment didn’t fit to her liking. She’d fussed with it for hours and couldn’t come up with a solution.

“I’ll let it cure,” she said over the phone. I chuckled, but sure enough, a few days later, after giving herself some distance from beating the problem to death, she came back with fresh eyes. In just a few minutes, she had tweaked the waist or neckline or whatever it needed and the garment fit like a charm.

I’ve appropriated the term because it works for so many things we make. A salad dressing that’s too pungent will mellow if you let it sit awhile before dinner. Paint colors settle into the perfect hue as they dry. And eyes that glaze over typos looking for the logic in a story will find the missing apostrophe if you rest them for a few hours.

When we put ourselves on a tight publishing schedule, we want to send our work out into the world to give our readers a chance to devour it and clap appropriately. Often, though, we can traumatize ourselves by writing and rewriting, then worrying over whether the story is good enough. We just need to get the damn thing off our computer before we go nuts.

As a self-published writer, I’ve made every mistake in the book.

I’ve published a book with a missing chapter; uploaded a first draft instead of the final, carefully edited manuscript. You name a mistake, and I’ve made it. We all have, according to the Facebook writing groups I’m in.

So I learned my lesson. Yes, everybody makes mistakes. You might have heard the story of the big five publisher who came out with a big book by a top author, only to find it contained eight chapters from a completely different book! I’m sure heads rolled over that fiasco, and it proves my point. You don’t catch everything, even when millions of dollars are at stake.

But as writers, we have to learn to manage our creative anxiety.

We all suffer from it. The solution may seem easy; after several hours of tweaking a piece that seems dead set on sending you off a cliff. Publish it and let the chips fall where they may. You console yourself with the bromide, nothing’s perfect. Everybody makes mistakes. So what if I’ve mixed up my its and it’s? No one will notice.

Except that’s totally the wrong approach.

Do you think Meryl Streep has 48 thousand Oscar nominations because she phones in her performances? Because she thinks, oh, no. I just can’t learn any more lines? And Michaelangelo’s statues have an honored place in the Louvre because he got tired of trying to get the wings on the angels right?

I think not. They learned how to pace themselves, to leave it alone when they were fighting the work, and the work was fighting back. They let it cure.

Okay, I get it. Life doesn’t always give us the time to do what needs doing.

You have a hot story that you want to get online now. Before you leave for work or the daycare center. So, step away from the computer for a few minutes. Give yourself that much time. Fix the kids’ lunch. Take your shower. At least wash your face, or do some stretches. Something to get your head out of the piece for a few minutes. To break the spell the draft has had on your concentration and focus so you can see clearly again.

Now, go back and give it one more read. Take a breath. Check for your usual suspects. The typos you typically make. Teh instead of The. Liek instead of like. A missing Oxford comma if you use them. You know what they are.

Then, and only then, in as calm a state of mind as you can muster, take a deep breath, make a live sacrifice to the Medium curating and clapping gods, and finally, you’re ready to hit publish.

Here are a few more of my Medium tips for your enjoyment. Thank you for reading.

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