Perfection (Ha!)
Perfection, what is it good for? I ask myself this question often, but not as often as I should as I find myself striving for just that. And it’s not sustainable, it’s exhausting.
What writing is concerned, especially editing, it is so far from attainable, it’s laughable. Because, let’s face it, it just is.
I give up, no I don’t, yes I do, don’t be silly. Exhausting.
The problem is, there is no such thing. Perfection is a made up word (as I suppose all words were at one stage) to describe something that will always be out of reach.
Looking at it from a different point of view – the double whammy. How hard is it to write character-based fiction when the imperfections required to make things interesting, that make us who we are (and characters who they are), are the very essence of this irrational predicament?
Surely the expectations I have of myself cannot possibly be projected on to the characteristics and behaviour of the characters that I create!
Told you it was irrational.
No, flaws are what makes a character interesting, adds conflict and mixes things up. All good things in Fiction, right?
And flaws are what makes us interesting, adds variety and solidifies our existence as human beings, or so the story goes.
Let us (aka me) strive for something less than perfect and the occasional lucky streak instead, and stop procrastinating in paralysed “end-up-doing-nothing”-ness, in an attempt to escape the possibility of looking silly.
Right?