The courage of a writer

I have good news! The paper that I co-wrote with my supervisor has been accepted for publication!

But you know at this stage when the editor asked me to work on the "writing" which means things like grammar and style... it made me very uncomfortable. Grammar isn't my strength. I felt immense insecurity and sought help from friends.

My insecurities about writing surfaced as well and I was scared. I am afraid that my reader will read my work and spot all my grammatical errors. And other sort of writing and thinking errors.

I think this is the courage that is needed by the writer. The courage to say it, even if you cannot be 100% sure it is correct, even if it's wrong, to say it loud and clear and not be ashamed that you do not know some things or many things. The courage to submit your work, even when you know the work is not perfect, it cannot be perfect and never will be perfect. Because you only have who you are now to do the work, you don't have who you desire to be, who you'd be 10 years later, all the time and help and resources in the world. The courage to put yourself (how you think) out there to be criticized and to allow people to make a judgement on your work.

I find this quotation immensely encouraging at this stage where I ought to be extremely delighted about this good news, yet I feel trepidation.

"For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them." - Aristotle

What this means is that we must not be paralyzed to start, to continue and to complete a work; wherever we are, at whatever stage we are at, in whatever we do. If we have the idea that we must first be of a certain standard before we can start, continue and complete something, we forfeit the experience of learning through the process. Thus, we must not be afraid to make mistakes, to make many of them. Not be afraid to produce substandard work. For this is probably is the only way to master something. And everyone, excluding a few anomalies, will probably start as an amateur and perfect their art and skills along the way.

"Every artist was first an amateur." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I also find comfort in that even established authors still spot errors in their books and still change the way they think and write by writing new editions. (I will not laugh anymore when I spot typo errors in printed books.)