A recipe for perfection? Not quite — but maybe for improvement
Mulling what I would say to a crowd of young journalism students at a state UIL conference in Austin, I considered the obvious:
“Get the hell out while you still can!”
But that didn’t strike the uplifting chord I was aiming for.
No, it had to be something about pursuing passions, staying curious, channeling pioneers such as Nellie Bly, while managing to avoid homelessness.
As my mind wandered, it hunted through memories of UIL competitions past. As a kid, the academic competitions weren’t just about winning trophies. They were about getting the heck out of my small town of Seguin and seeing the world, or, er, at least San Antonio.
The UIL conference in Austin earlier this month, called the Interscholastic League Press Conference, is pretty much the reason I ended up at UT. It introduced me to a campus with more people than my hometown.
I survived several spring conferences, and several summer sessions, without getting lost or thrown out of Jester Center or converted to Scientology on the Drag. So it gave me the confidence to think I could last four years to get an undergraduate degree.
Turned out, I did better than that: I went for four and a half years.
One UIL story stands out boldest in my memory, and, without it, I’m not sure you’d be reading my column today.
It was my first UIL contest, in the fifth or sixth grade. I had only one goal in life: to win the Poetry Reading category. My coach and I spent months preparing, during lunch, after school. Every syllable, every pause, every intonation had been painstakingly calculated and rehearsed for full, dramatic effect.
Finally, the day of the districtwide contest arrived. My mom bought me a new dress, silver, with pink ribbon and white ruffles. She let me wear makeup outside the house. My dad, who often missed school assemblies and band concerts because he
was driving a truck, took off work.
When my big moment before the judges came, I read the poetry with as much animation as one can read the Shel Silverstein classic beginning with the immortal lament: “Homework, oh Homework! I hate you! You stink!”
I soon realized that my subject matter was less substantive and tragic than the poems read by other contestants. No matter. Surely, no one had practiced as long and as hard as I. “The Highway Man” had nothing on “Homework.”
A few anguished hours later, I sat proudly next to my dad in the cafeteria and waited as the winners were announced. Seventh place. Then sixth place, fifth place. With each one, I grew more hopeful, and more tense. Fourth, third, second. Then, could it be? No. In minutes, I melted into a puddle of tears and self-pity. I wanted to go home. I wanted to take off that ridiculous dress my mother had clearly wasted her money on. I couldn’t even make eye contact with my father. I’d failed him. My life was over. Out, out brief candle.
What’s the lesson?
Then, someone tapped me on the shoulder and said they were about to announce the winners in Ready Writing. It took a few moments, but my mind flashed back.
I vaguely remembered a teacher asking me, at the last minute, to fill in for another contestant. My mom drove me somewhere. I wrote an essay on a topic I couldn’t recall. I went home.
No practice. No coach. No chance, I thought.
I prepared for another disappointment. Seventh place, sixth, fifth … When the announcer hit second, I headed back toward my dark place. And then. First. My name.
I went from despair to disbelief.
Was I dreaming? Was there a mistake?
Everything was a blur. I remember taking the stage and hugging everyone I saw as they handed me a 2-inch trophy. I rushed back down to my father’s arms.
And I felt, for the first time in my life, that I was good at something. My lost little soul had an identity: writer. Never mind that our house had few books.
And then, confusion set in. What was the lesson here? Work hard and you’ll lose? Do what comes easy and you’ll win?
Chisel, polish, repeat
In my warped mind, already genetically inclined to perfectionism, my gift was only genuine if it was effortless. For years after, I refused to revise or edit my essays and poems. I refused to try too hard, lest I be perceived as an ordinary, unanointed sucker slugging through.
This went on until Senior AP English with Mrs. Richardson, an old-school, all-business teacher who was so serious about grammar that she made anyone who committed gratuitous use of the word “like” stand for the remainder of the class.
On my first essay, she gave me aD-. I explained that there must be a mistake, that I was a writer, that usually, teachers adorned my work with smiley faces and simple notes of “thank you,” for giving them the pleasure of reading it. Mrs. Richardson was unimpressed.
To her, it seemed, no idea was so clever that it could shine amid a mess of awkward sentence structure, misspellings and subject-verb disagreements. She had a point. I was humbled, but not tragically so. I began revising. I began editing. I began trying.
By the end of the year, she wasn’t only giving me A’s, she was reading my papers aloud.
It still took me years to understand the value of revision and careful edits. I’m still prone to perfectionism, and unfortunately I’ve passed the toxic gene onto my 6-year-old budding writer. We fight it, though. In our house, “perfect” is banned, and trying is prized over winning.
My advice to my daughters is the same as it is to every crowd of young people I speak to, writers and non-writers. Try things. Mess up. Try more things. Mess up some more.
Somewhere in there, you’ll find your gift. But don’t be content with it. Don’t leave it to tarnish in a dump heap of passive voice. Chisel. Polish. Repeat. Shine.