I’ve decided to air my shame about something that’s been nagging me for a while now. There are two things really, but I’ll start with this one first. It’s been rotting in my creative garden, hindering new growth so I’m digging it up, airing it out, and putting it in the compost. To do that, I must tell the story of how I missed a typo.
I once spent a very good amount of time and focus to make a book for dear family friends. I traveled to their house in southern Colorado, sorted through their photos then scanned and scanned and scanned. It was a gift for my friend’s mother and he wrote beautifully all he knew of his parents. We went over family information, sorted through military medals and accolades, family crests and geneologies. We considered how to approach the ever painful event of losing a child. It was an intimate process and one I will treasure. He is one of my dad’s all time best friends and favorite people, so it was an added treat to drink wine at night and discuss ol’Stan in loving ways.
I returned home to Brooklyn, hit my basement office, and set to work making a book.
I created a time line and organized images into categories accordingly, then worked on thumbnail sketches of page layouts – my favorite part.
Drawing out the book is fun because I feel ideas in my hands for a moment. As the book takes shape and the bird’s eye view fills out, it sets the pace of the book. It becomes a little mini map that tells how many pages are allotted for ancestors or weddings or babies or what have you.
This was before the time of oline book making companies so I utilized the digital print shop I previously worked for in Dallas. They took care of printing (on two different kinds of papers), collating, trimming, delivery to the binder, pick up from the binder and shipping. The binder was this amazing craftsman I met while setting up a wedding book product years before. I’d experienced his handy work with my own eyes and hands.
I delivered a gorgeous, leather bound family heirloom along with a cool mother’s day card for him to give to his mum, and got paid a real money – $3,000! After the cost of production for five books (four for he and his family, one for me) my take away was a little over $2,000. It was difficult to ask for at the time, but I swelled with pride when I deposited that check – even made a copy of it for posterity. Great pay for good work.
Except BLAM. Mudder flippin typo. Right there on the opening page. A relative billboard set in huge letters, alone on the page with a graphic. Nothing to divert the eye from the blaring stain on an otherwise perfect project.
To make it worse, I only realized it a couple of years ago – too many miles past the last rest stop for being able to fix or replace it easily or cheaply. The thought of this book with it’s ugly mishap living in people’s houses – my friends! – turns my stomach.
How could I have missed it? Why didn’t anyone say anything? What is the lesson here? I have been secretly, relentlessly, shamefully asking myself these questions.
The answer is – I didn’t ask for help. All I needed was one other human to read through and it would have been golden. I lived with a trained writer for crying out loud, working in HER basement apartment!
So, what to do about it? I’ve been debating this for awhile. Wait for the mud to settle and the water to clear and sometimes opportunity will create a course of action for you.* Through an upcoming opportunity, I will be able to connect with new folks who may also be interested in heritage style books. Meaning – time to create new samples… of this book… with NO typos! What a wonderful day when I can deliver revised copies to my friend and finally breath easy.
In the mean time – I’ll ask for help more often. There’s no shame in that, only the honor of having someone else’s expertise.
*I just discovered this gem of wisdom:
“Do you have the patience to wait
Till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
Till the right action arises by itself?”
― Lao Tzu