The Pursuit of Perfection

A surefire way to never finish your novel. “A plan executed imperfectly now, is better than a plan executed meticulously never.” I’m not sure who said this (Elizabeth Gilbert?), but I think there’s a lot of truth in this quote that relates to writing.

I’ve always wanted to write a book, but because I wanted to write the next mind-blowing bestseller, I couldn’t even get started—for years! When my former boss, a veteran author, told me to just sit down and write something every day even if the result wasn’t any good, that’s when I wrote my first 130,000-word draft within three months.

Another thing that held me back was the fact that I’m not a native English speaker, so I’m constantly fretting about making embarrassing mistakes (even while I’m writing this post). So I hired a professional editor to help me polish my manuscript.

The idea for this topic actually came from a conversation I had with fellow author Lynn Turner; she shared the rough synopsis for her next book and reminded me of how my attempts at writing the perfect synopsis for my book almost made me not click the publish button. I still want to rewrite it every time I read it.

Chances are your novel is never going to be perfect (mine certainly isn’t), but don’t let that keep you from finishing and publishing it. Not achieving your goal is ultimately going to hurt you more than the odd negative review.

Alex Benkast