Pushing Past the ‘OK Plateau’

My heart pounded as my fingers guided the cursor to the link on the screen. This was it—edits for my first published piece.

I’m sure there are things to fix, but I bet she loved that intro, I thought to myself. I wonder if she’ll tell me how great my examples were!

As the Google document loaded onto the screen, a gasp slipped through my lips. I’d never seen so many highlights. Worse than the terrifying number of corrections was the paragraph-long comment at the bottom of the piece. With kindness, my editor explained the shortcomings of my article.

My pride wasn’t just dethroned, it was obliterated.

As I read through the notes, my eyes were opened with new clarity. These new edits cast a shadow on every piece I had written. Reluctantly, I asked my husband, “Do you think my writing is hard to read sometimes?” As graciously as he could, he confirmed what I already knew to be true.

While this moment was embarrassing for me at the time, it has since then become one of my greatest lessons. What I experienced was a pretty common reality. I had simply fallen prey to a phenomenon author Joshua Foehr refers to as the “OK Plateau.”

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