Editing

I'm now on the approxatimately 501st copy of editing work for my book.  In long years of reading and writing and doing documentation professionally, this is one of the longest and most frustrating things I've ever done.

I've printed out hardcopy and edited that.  I've reviewed it online and edited that.  I've reviewed online, made additional changes I located and then edited that.  And still, the nagging little errors miss my every sweep, ready to leap in and show themelves after I think I'm finished.

Part of me just wants to surrender and give up, to say "That's enough - you've surely caught 99% of the errors.  A mis-spelled word isn't going to make or break you."  But as soon as that comes up, the very first time I catch one more error, I immediately switch to "What else did I miss?" and get ready to re-route the thing for formatting and review.

In an odd way this is highly symbolic of the work that I do right now - sending documents around for review and signature, learning (the hard way) that printing out a hard copy is truly the only way to review, catching something I should have changed after I signed it.  Rushing there gives me no more greater speed than in my personal life, apparently.

It strikes as remarkable because this is really the sort of thing people think they want:  clean or well assembled work or documents, 100% correct, pleasing to the eye.  What they fail to realize is that such work takes a lot of attention to detail and hard work (those "Thankless Tasks" I have written of before) is work that is by and large unseen and unappreciated.

Not true in this case of course - the end result is something which I am doing for myself, which I will at least reap the benefits of having accomplished instead of yet another document that is essentially invisible.

Still, I have to wonder:  if we held this level of expectation out to everyone - if we expected everyone to turn out high quality work - would most people be willing to make the commitment and effort?