The Competence Myth

FRIENDS, I am an incompetent person.

No one who has ever interacted with me is surprised to hear this. I am generally the sort of man you expect to find wearing two trashbags taped together as some sort of clothing, the sort of man who can literally forget something within seconds:

THE DUCHESS: Don’t forget your keys!

ME: Of course! <leaves house, closes door, pauses> Dang it. Forgot my keys.

This extends to my writing career in many hilarious and frustrating ways. I am also, it turns out, the sort of man who can (and will) confuse several different style guides, forget to save changes, and make a lot of really dumbo mistakes. And yet, I have a pretty solid writing career going here. Which is only notable because there is a belief out there that in order to be a professional writer you have to be uber-competent and make exactly zero mistakes. Which I disprove simply by existing.

Say Nothing. Act Casual

Now, don’t misunderstand me: You should certainly try to be competent. As should I! But we need to dispense with the idea that you have to be absolutely perfect in everything you do. That your pitches must be perfect. That your query letters must be perfect. That your manuscripts, communications, headshot, and synopses must be perfect. I’m here to tell you that there’s a margin of error. And in my experience it’s kind of huge.

This is because writing is a subjective thing, and also a profession. With the former, most of the mistakes you’re gonna make aren’t really mistakes at all, but rather different interpretations of instructions, guidelines, or feedback, and most of the people you’ll work with understand this. With the latter, there’s a lot of professional courtesy out there. I’ve had many, many variations on the ‘Sorry about that oversight / don’t worry about it NBD!’ exchange with people paying me to write things for them.

Because, here’s the thing: I’m getting paid to write things because that’s not something just anyone can do. So as with any professional partnership, there’s an allowance for mistakes and oversights. Of course, there’s a difference between the occasional screwup and, you know, being absolutely crap at your work, but as long as you stay on the right side of that spectrum you’re generally fine.

Now, I have lost jobs because of the aforementioned trashbag clothing. But those were office jobs where apparently people are offended when you show up wearing trashbags with a duct tape belt. In other words: Snobs.