I have a problem here in this ultra-modern digital screenlife we’re all bouncing through. I can’t arrive at true and realistic final edits for my essays, articles, or even comments until I’ve posted online whatever I’ve composed in draft form offline.

For blog posts especially, I don’t fully catch typos and grammatical mistakes until I’m looking at my work with the awareness that there may well be real, live, anonymous people reading me out their in a big cruel opinionated world. Sometimes I catch structural problems in my work I should have seen from the beginning — maybe the need to move sentences into new positions, or ways to cut sections that I couldn’t see until the dang thing had gone global.

This problem is no doubt a function of composing online in blog applications. But even when I think I’m being careful and write off line in order to use Word’s spelling and grammar tools, errant mistakes sneak in anyway. I know others have this same problem. Check out Lindsey (Lazarte) Carson’s article, Should We Edit Our Articles After They’ve Already Been Published? from July 2018.

When you take your typing habits seriously and end up writing stuff daily, bugbears and gremlins mess with you endlessly and insidiously. All too often, you don’t catch them until you have that feeling that maybe someone is going to pull your pants down while you are on-screen.

I try to review and edit everything that will go public at least three times on my laptop screen before hitting the “publish” botton. For op-eds, articles, or blog essays, it’s not uncommon for me to include at least two edits as well on paper with red or blue pen. Most of my short stories go through eight or ten drafts before I send them off for consideration.

The good old days

Not too long ago freelance writers’ work tended to be printed on paper in magazines, journals, and newspapers.. My usual process on a freelance piece was to do too much research, write a stupidly long draft, then self-edit things down to the contracted 1,000 words (or whatever), and finally ship that draft off to an editor-god person.

Invariably for me, I’d only discover my idiot stealth typos, gaffs, and non-obvious structural problems after sending that contract piece off. One way or another, though, the piece would get cleaned up and I’d get paid. It was the way of the world. I never stopped feeling inadequate and insecure, but I kept on striving to do the best I could.

I never went to journalism school. Nor have I spent time in an MFA program. Working from a place of inadequacy can be a bit taxing no matter what level of success we find. Eventually, a very kind and seasoned magazine editor said to me over lunch one sunny spring afternoon:

“Writing on any level is about getting lost in the forest because of the trees — and the bushes. Don’t worry. Imperfection is fine. What do you think editors are for?”

Swimming into ghosthood

That was lunchtime back in the early 1990s. This is now the 2020s. I continue to be stunned by how many typos I find in my local paper these days. Sometimes it appears to be a typesetting problem, but more and more errors appear to likely be a function of less than careful editorial moments and everyone’s need to rush.

I’d wager as well that much of the problem is a function of the screen life we all lead now. Digital text is virtual, only half real. All too often a sentence can swim into ghosthood mistakeland and you don’t even notice it.

It actually feels like a lot of people are willing to accept a few gaffs because it happens all the time now. Big deal. Whatever. Online formatting can create incredibly sickening feelings of de-sensitized déjà vu to the point where like the writer and/or editor who glossed over a gaff, readers here in the part of the 2020s that is inside display screens pass over mistakes all the time.

I honestly get all of this for the most part. Such is this partial life mediated by remote connections everywhere. But a piece of me can’t let go of my mistakes and errors. Shouldn’t that be the case for every writer hoping to be worth their own can of beans?

Weird beauty

Which brings us to the weird beauty of digital publishing. It’s generally not so difficult to update online work we’ve published. Yet, a good many writers and editors (of every caliber) allow their mistakes to sit. At times it seems like no one ever checks the material they’ve posted online. Either that or people think there’s a rule about changing stuff after publication.

Again, this is the 2020s. Most rules are open to interpretation in a big way. Certainly, when you’re writing for a publication, you need to follow their guidelines. I’ve worked on great teams where editors are more than happy to let me modify my work after it is posted. And, obviously, if we’re talking about a comment through Disqus, say, or a blog post or even a little ditty on Facebook, there’s usually no reason not to fix mistakes and other imperfections (it will be interesting, in fact, to see what happens with Twitter’s latest decision to allow high-end users to edit tweets).

I get it, though: most writers are humping to please, moving faster and faster on a continual basis and barely paid enough money to buy a second roll of toilet paper for the week. Besides, whatever we publish today will be buried by the beginning of next month. Right?

Where should perfection land in a world moving at the speed of light, operating under the illusion that “information wants to be free?”

I don’t know the answer to that question. I do, however, know that I’m going to continue to correct my work as best as I am able and if that means I have to publish something publicly before I make the final rounds of perfection, then so be it. Honestly, I hope editors at electronic publications on all levels will do the same.

Here’s the kicker as far as I’m concerned: What does it say about a writers if they don’t correct those typos and mistakes whenever they find them online? It’s generally a pretty simple process.

And what does it say about all of us if the answer is that it doesn’t really matter?

This essay was first published at The Writers Cooperative publication on Medium.com