Mistakes and imperfections

`0:27:31`

no shade on my Ink editors but I had a few run-ins like that where there was like a sentence I wrote which I was really felt really good about and they kind of rewrote something and it was very it just felt like they were sterilizing it. Yes it's a great word. Yeah. And I'm like no no it's okay if there's some bacteria on this or whatever right? In my head I'm like that's yeah that might be better technically. Like there's words sometimes they would use. I I can't remember any examples but there was like the more it was the correct word but I don't want that word. I would like the way the other word sounded and felt and it was a little awkward and I kind of liked that. And so that's one of the tricks with editors is to help help them or help you know I guess help them understand what you're going for in your writing. It's for me it's not precision. It's not

`0:28:18`

it it's it's a feeling I'm trying to get across. And this to sterilize something in some ways is to remove all the feeling. Like you walk into a space that's sterile. Maybe it's a beautiful museum or something or it's a beautiful modern piece of architecture. I love modern architecture. I love old But you walk into some modern and it's too sterile. It's cold. Everything's too perfect. There's like three materials. There's no dust anywhere. There's nothing. And you're like I don't really feel good in this space or I don't really want to touch anything and leave a fingerprint. Versus you walk into an old space that's patinaed. It's worn. It's been lived in. Uh maybe the ceilings are lower. It's more human scale and you're like this is messy. This is sort of whatever but I love this space. And that's how I want my writing to feel is like kind of

`0:29:05`

like a lived in and I want our design to feel this way. Like our products are designed differently. They don't look like the industries where the industry work is all kind of everyone's like driving their style from Apple. It's just like everything's like trying to be Apple. We're trying to be like the cozy living room that's comfortable and it's precise enough but there's some attitude there. There's some personality. There's humanity I'd like to think at least and I'd like to have that in my writing as well. Yeah. Well I think that this is part of the problem with the keyboard itself is you have the delete key. Whereas if you have a typewriter or you're handwriting you end up with all of these weird errors and these weird imperfections and you sort of go on these tangents and stuff like that and

`0:29:50`

you're like, "Ah, I messed up, but I kind of got to go with it." Sort of like the path that you were talking about earlier. Whereas with the delete key, you can just look at the screen and go, "Delete, delete, delete, delete." And I just wonder if the delete key has contributed to a kind of polish in contemporary writing. Good question. I think you're probably right. I mean, also like grammar checkers and spell and these things like look, they can be useful, I'm sure. Like in some cases, but I think when they become a crutch and you lean on them and you're aiming for again, like technical precision. There are some writers who are wonderful at that, but I think it goes too far for most people and it removes themselves from the piece. Got to be careful of that. So, when you were working with the ink editors, with the rework editors and you

`0:30:37`

were having those conversations, would you go back and rewrite the piece from scratch or would you go in and make line edits? Um both. It depends on the piece. So, some of the pieces like some of the edits were so substantial, they wanted us to really rework the piece and there's a point where I don't know where the point is. It's not like 50%, but there's a point where you just feel like this is moving around so much, it's not the same thing anymore. So, let's not work from the same thing. Let's start over. And they were right. Like this idea would have been better presented this way. So, I'm not going to try to take this ball of clay and turn it into something else. It's just not going to be that anymore. There's not enough material there anymore. So, we'll start over. Other times it was just like nailing a few sentences or like whatever. So, it's it's both. It's not a I'm not rigid in those in those ways. Um