Humility vs Perfection and the sweet space in between

Humble is a good place to live, right?

I've had an interesting week. Shackles, the first novel that I wrote (over a decade over *cough*) never found an official publishing home. It did get my foot in the door with my current publishing house though, so I'm grateful for that.

A few years back, I read Shackles again and I still loved the characters and the plot. At that point I decided to put it out as a 'warts-and-all' freebie to give readers the opportunity of checking out my writing. Bait, if you will. I even wrote a 'warts-and-all' disclaimer in the preface because I just wasn't going to re-edit the whole thing again. (Besides, I'd checked it twenty-trillion-times and had some others look over it for errors too and we were all happy that it was fine.) I knew I'd have to re-edit at some point, but with new books to be written, that never really loomed large on my horizon.

Fast forward a few years to this week.

Out of the blue, four new reviews arrived. Check them out here. All of them positive - some so lovely that I wanted to cry and hug my dog. Considering my allergies, that is quite something. 

BUT...

A significant number of these reviews commented on a few grammar and typo issues.

*DIES* but (even bigger BUT...)

Here's the weird thing, they loved the book anyway.

My immediate reaction was to start re-editing. Sorry kids, make your own supper. But I'm also currently writing to deadline. So what is a girl to do? I feel like I'm parading Amazon in my ancient bikini, the one with the elastic that has given up on life. 

It is humbling.

But it's also beautiful because I know that what they are falling in love with is not my broken ability but they are seeing Jesus through the cracks of what I can produce and are loving Him in the midst of typos and dodgy grammar. 

It just doesn't get better than that.

So I do have a chapter-a-day-only-after-I've-met-my-word-count editing plan. But it will take time and in the meantime, I'll be out there warts and all for the world to read. And strangely, I'm okay with that.

I'd love to hear from you. Perfectionist? Any humbling happening in your life right now? Please tell me I'm not alone in my ancient bikini.

Dianne J. Wilson writes novels from her hometown in East London, South Africa, where she lives with her husband and three daughters. She is neck-deep in a three book contract for a YA series, Spirit Walker, with Pelican / Watershed.

Finding Mia is available from Amazon, Pelican / Harbourlight, Barnes & Noble and other bookstores.

Shackles is available as a free ebook from Amazon & Smashwords.

Find her on Facebook, Twitter and her sporadic blog Doodles.