RobArt Penguin

I grew up with this idea that I shouldn’t mistakes, so if I did, I would move forward anyway trying to live with it rather than start over. Currently, I discovered that my first book has more errors than I first thought, so I am faced with living with an inferior book or fixing it. For a while I tried to live with it as is. But the problems haunted me.

In my fine art, living with or covering up mistakes made for some messy drawings where I tried to undo a badly drawn line, leaving smudges all over my picture. In school I would turn in typewritten papers full of white out, smudgy letters and holes where I rubbed too hard. It was my sister who introduced me to the idea of happy accidents in art, taking advantage of mistakes to make something better. That led me to the realization that if I made a mistake, I could simply start over rather than be stuck with it. Of course, corrections are easier in the computer age. No one knows how many times I edited this blog before I published it.

So, before I publish the third book in my series, I’m going to fix the first one. Once I made the decision, I wasn’t as alarmed about the number of errors or the time I would lose in moving forward. Once, I re-publish a better first book, I will have more confidence to promote it. So, it may be a set back to start over, but in the long run I will benefit. At least I will have peace of mind.