Mistakes Help You Flourish

I was thoroughly educated in the mechanics of writing. At the top-ranked University of Missouri-Columbia's School of Journalism, we were tested regularly and relentlessly on grammar, spelling, punctuation, and on sentence and paragraph structure. We took several tests daily so that these writing skills would become embedded in our psyches. We were taught to proofread articles backwards so we couldn't become immersed in the flow of the writing and miss the smaller errors.

I honor this training, but I know that in the past 15 years of writing fiction (and being a writing coach to fiction and nonfiction writers alike), I've had to unlearn everything I've learned. And it hasn't been easy. The image of Sister Thomas Aquinas in primary school wielding her ruler after I somehow misspelled said "sed" still lingers. That fear of making writing mistakes is deep in the bones of every person I work with. It hinders the flow of their writing. It makes them so terrified of making a mistake they can hardly write at all.

I have one writing client who ran away from home at 14 and didn't have any schooling beyond that age. I have another who has a PhD. Who do you think is progressing the fastest in learning to write fiction?

The runaway, of course. Why? She is less "sure" of the rules so isn't restricted by them. If you're a stickler for grammar and punctuation, be ready to put that aside while you really learn how to write.

Your soul wants to express itself; it doesn't give a darn about where the comma or quote mark goes. I promise you, you can nitpick this beautiful expression to death. Leave it be. Let yourself write. Worry about the mechanics much much later in the process.

I was reminded of this recently listening to The New Earth by Eckhart Tolle on tape in my car on the way home from my art studio. It was the last side of the last tape. He spoke about how much despair results from too much reliance on worldly things, that we give these worldy things an importance they don't deserve. The soul is the key factor. As I sat in rush hour traffic, I thought, that's exactly the same in writing. If you're focusing on the grammar, you're missing the point. Let the soul speak! Let it soar! Worry about all the technicalities later. Or do as my "runaway" client is doing. As I coach her in writing her life story, at the same time she's studying grammar, punctuation and sentence and paragraph structure (and progressing rapidly in these technicalities, I might add, but not at the expense of the magic of her soulful expression).

I took up visual art five years ago. In the old, retrictive, can't-make-a-mistake journalism brain, I could not draw a stick figure to save my life. Life is an adventure or it is nothing at all. So, I took up the slow and often painful process of learning to let go of control, living directly with the paintbrush, letting the energy of the universe flow out my hands onto the canvas.

Doing art is really just making one mistake after another. When you're making a "mistake" you're doing it correctly. As you learn this, you have to redefine the word mistake. You can call it  process, exploration, the spontaneous expression of color and form. Mistakes/art -- it's all simply "living in the moment". I'm now a professional/selling visual artist. Although I still have my bad controlling stick figure moments, they're becoming less frequent.

If all this sounds too woo woo for the business world, consider how thinking outside the box has helped businesses flourish throughout the generations.

Walter Paepcke, founder of the Aspen Institute, was quoted in Barry Hoffman's The Fine Art of Advertising as saying: "The artist and the businessman should cultivate every opportunity to teach and supplement one another, to cooperate with one another, just as the nations of the world must do. Only in such a fusion of talents, abilities, and philosophies can there be even a modest hope for the future, a partial alleviation of the chaos and misunderstandings of today.”