What is worth doing is worth doing well

I participated in the commonwealth short story prize writing contest, submissions ended few days ago, result will be out next year.

I submitted a 4 part story for the competition and I am so proud of myself.

Shaa, that’s not the main gist, here’s the main gist.

Because this is an international competition, I decided to look for a professional proofreader and editor to edit it for me.

Before now, I’ve been writing stories and editing them myself. I’ve participated in competitions but none of them had such large word count like this one.

Also, none of them before this was an international competition.

But for this one, I knew I had to source for a professional and pay them because why not?

I didn’t have to search for long because I remembered my friend and one time team member Eunice, who is a professional editor.

I sent her a message on Whatsapp and asked how much she charges to edit. Eunice wanted to know how many words and I told her.

She told me her price and I promised to send the money in a week’s time because I still had a little over a month before the submission deadline.

Take note of this: this is supposed to be a ‘pay before service’ service.

Almost 2 weeks later, I realized that I didn’t have the complete money and wasting more time would be dangerous so I sent her another message, asked for her account details and paid in about 70% of the money.

Now, as a friend, I pleaded with her to start the work and I promised to complete it on or before she is done.

My editor got to work and started editing. She sent in the first draft, asked me to point out corrections to be made and send back to her.

People of God, professional editing and proofreading is stressful because eh, that story stressed Eunice.

More than 7 corrections made and just when you think you’re done, another little mistake is seen.

Eunice didn’t complain even once, na me even dey apologize to her for the stress and she said

“no problem, shey that’s what you paid me for”.

People of God, after so many corrections, we were finally done. Young lady even sent me a voice note to teach me something about writing/editing.

She did the finishing touches and sent me the final document. In about 5 hours, I transferred the remaining of the money and sent evidence of payment.

I then went to the commonwealth short story prize website, uploaded my story and clicked on the submit button💃🏽.

Yeah, congratulations to me.

Okay, so why am I sharing this story?

There are a lot of lessons to learn from here

1. Know when to outsource and pay for it: abeg abeg, you cannot do everything by yourself.
No be everything dem dey learn for Google or YouTube, no be everything you suppose do by yourself. Find a professional today and pay them to do that thing!

2. Put in your best, what is worth doing is worth doing well: Before you say I outsourced because I have money, please note first that paying that money was a sacrifice on my part because this is a competition I’m not even sure of winning.

I only wanted to put in my best because I can’t write and submit a very good story and fail just because of improper editing that a little, not so little money would have solved.

3. Patronize your friends: it’s witchcraft to know that your friend is good at something and you pay someone else to do it.
The interesting thing is that some people will have the audacity to meet those same people they refuse to patronize when they’re in need. Should they steal the money for you?

4: Do not send your friends to the village by overpricing them: Umunne m na umunna m(translated as my brothers and sisters), have you heard of wickedness before?

Wickedness is when you know the price of something outside and would buy it at that price outside but expect your friend to give you that same thing at half the price just because you are a friend. Stopeet!! Learn to stop this before thunder will fire you!

5. Pay people their money in full after a finished business including friends and family: Sons of Adam and daughters of Eve have this habit of refusing to pay friends and family in full and then they turn them to enemies because they asked to be paid for their hardwork.

If you don’t have the money at that moment, do not patronize them or better still, plead with them, come to an agreement and pay in installments. Do not attract curses to yourself abeg, thank you.

And that is it my favorite person, please go and pray for me to win this competition o.

The prize for the winner is huge and I go do giveaway if I win.
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy the story.

Did you learn any other lesson? Kindly drop it in the comment section below.

Your favorite storyteller,
Christiana Dennis💙.