A Perfectionist Reflects on Excellence
Two weeks ago, I spoke my plan to the universe. After decades of writing, I am almost ready to send one of my novels out into the world, with a planned launch for sometime this coming fall. Almost immediately, I began receiving cheers and kudos and messages of support from all the different spheres of which I am part. And how did I respond to one of the most encouraging weeks in my writing life?
By panicking, of course.
The fear that no one will read your work is a powerful deterrent for writers. At times, though, the fear that more people than you expect will read it is just as bad. Every writer I know believes, deep down, that he or she is an imposter, a poser, a fraud. We are all of us just waiting to be exposed. Nothing threatens to do that more than a bad manuscript.
And so, not long after I posted the announcement, I woke up in the middle of the night, convinced that my novel was trash. I started revising again the next day, going sentence by sentence, clause by clause, word by word, looking for any prosecutable laziness with the obsessive zeal of a tort lawyer.
Not surprisingly, this made me an object of ridicule from my family. “Why are you going over it again? You’ve written what, five drafts? [The actual number is closer to 25] You’re going to drive yourself crazy trying to get everything exactly right.”
As any good family member might, I should pause here to point out the hypocrisy in their taunts. Denise is famous for tying herself in knots when she writes her sermons, always searching for the perfect angle from which to approach a text. Jonathan spends hours working through the fine details of art projects and lego builds; God help you if you offer an unsolicited opinion. And if there is one thing in this world as reliable as death and taxes, it is the minutia with which Zachary will pick apart every musical performance he’s a part of.
But I digress.
My family’s point is well taken, and not entirely wrong. My favorite writing teacher—Anne Lamott—says, “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.” It’s true. For the perfectionist to create something far from perfect leads to despair; to create something near to perfect results hubris. The more we strive for perfection, the more we become a slave to it. The effort to be faultless often ruins our projects. It almost always destroys our happiness. It leaks into our relationships. It poisons our souls.
In the last decade or so, I have noticed how much American pop culture has awakened to this danger. Messages that you are good enough the way you are—often associated with physical appearance—seem to be all over the place. Contemporary Christian music has an entire sub-genre that might be classified under Jesus-as-self-esteem booster (Lauren Daigle, anyone?). We don’t want anyone to feel left out or devalued.
For the most part, I celebrate this idea. None of us should have to walk through life feeling like we don’t measure up. The whole point of grace is to render our faults irrelevant. The world is a better place when we bear with one another, lift one another up, value each person for who they are.
The tension for me comes in those areas in which good enough can’t be good enough. Given the choice between a surgeon with exceptional skills versus one with high self-esteem, you can guess which one I’d go for. Perfection is too much to ask of anyone, but excellence should be an expectation. Less than that quickly devolves into malpractice.
The same principle holds for artistic pursuits, including fiction writing. I cannot create a perfect novel. No one ever has, despite what some zealous English teachers may tell you. But I hope to write an excellent one. I hope the work can stand the scrutiny of the marketplace. I hope my efforts can entertain and enlighten, or at least make people laugh at the ridiculousness of being human.
If I have any hope of that happening, I have to push beyond, “I feel good about this.” I have to move into a space more like, “The fabric of this work will not easily tear.”
An edited page. I am so happy the original did not go out to anyone before these (and other) edits.
My latest round of edits revealed much that was wrong with the manuscript—awkward sentences, typos, plot holes, accidental repetitions. If I had delivered that version to the world, I would have been forever ashamed of the things I didn’t catch. The latest draft is much closer to what I think it should be. Likely I will do at least one more round of edits.
A writing instructor once told me that, when you see a published work, you aren’t looking at a project that was finished. You’re reading a manuscript that was finally abandoned. Authors get to a point when tinkering with one thing only causes a problem in another. You have to know when to let it be what it is.
That is my task of late—trying to find the line between excellence and perfection, and to get on the right side of that line. Too far in either direction will ruin the project. I have to be fussy and demanding and unflinching in my editing, but I also have to show some grace to the manuscript. Otherwise, I won’t love it, and no one else will either.
Perfectionism may be the voice of the oppressor, but excellence is the call of the professional. I hope I can figure out how to navigate that tension. And I hope you can too.
