Perfect, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
I have nearly finished my edits of the final book in the current arc of my Forgotten Fodder series.
When I’m done, it will be time to send Bold Moves to my editor.
When I started, it was clear that I had rushed some parts. It is the final book of a 4-book story arc and I was excited to be at the end. A lot of set-up from the prior 3 books has built to this.
So, here’s the thing – when I began editing, Bold Moves was about 37,000 words long. Now, near the end of my edit, it’s about 41,000 words today.
If I was writing for NaNoWriMo, I’d be 9000 words short. I know that anything over 40,000 words can technically count as a novel. But it’s still a short novel, even arguably a novelette.
I am really happy with how the story concludes. But now, I’m second-guessing myself. Should I add another chapter? An afterword? I told my editor I’d planned to send this to her in just over a week.
It’s done. Is it perfect? Does it need to be perfect? And most importantly – how do you define perfect?
Unfinished work
A lot of would-be artists – writers, painters, sculptors, and so on – never finish a single piece of work.
Among my many finished novels are a whole bunch of half-started, semi-realized, unfinished works. Sci-fi, fantasy, and even a technothriller or two I started but never finished.
Some of these just stopped speaking to me. Others got shunted to the side for new projects.
Despite completing 3/5 of the Source Chronicles novels, and getting a good way into the 4th book, I haven’t touched that series (save edits on book 3) in 10 years. I do, however, intend to finish it at some point down the line.
Getting done with a project in and of itself can be a challenge. This happens for different reasons. My problem, presently, is an internal debate as to whether what is done is sufficient.
Should I add words to make Bold Moves a longer book? Will that improve and make it closer to perfect and does that matter?
I have no doubt it could be argued that I easily could have made Unexpected Witness and The Clone Conundrum into one book. Likewise, Unraveling Conspiracy and Bold Moves could have been one book. But I decided that closer to 50,000-word novels would be better than 100,000-word novels.
Why? Because the average attention span seems to be shrinking. And I felt the quality of what I was producing made it worthwhile to create 4 shorter novels over 2 longer ones.
They are done. And in the quest I set for myself to write more – done is proof that I am writing more.
Hence why I am publishing 6 novels total this year.
But getting a work finished and calling it done doesn’t alleviate all the fear.
Perfection is in the eye of the beholder
I am well aware that I am not writing the Great American Novel. I’m writing sci-fi and fantasy, which is a niche market.
My blogs? These are a niche market, too. This all speaks to the truth that there’s truly no One Size Fits All.
Likewise, what we define as perfect is not static and objective.
Beauty is subjective. Perfection, likewise, is also subjective.
As an artist, I strive to create the most perfect works I can. I desire to tell a great story, provide interesting characters, situations, scenarios, and plots in the words I use. The pictures of the worlds, starships, landscapes, and everything else in my head are painted in the words I share. I hope that you see them for the same beauty that I do.
To that end, recently, I’ve taken to not describing how certain characters look. Why? So that you picture them according to your imagination.
The attempt to create the perfect work of art can be a tripping hazard. I know more than one writer, for example, who will create a chapter, then go back and edit it. More than once. In fact, they are so frequently editing, tweaking, and altering what they’ve already done that they don’t finish.
It’s never done. And since it’s never done, they never share it.
This doesn’t just happen in writing. Some artists paint and repaint the same thing again and again, trying to get it perfect. A potter throws clay, and reshapes the same bowl, again and again, striving for perfection, but never finishes and fires it.
Done beats perfect because with completion comes a sense of achievement.
Get it done to feel complete
In 2020, I decided that I needed to write more. I set a goal for myself for daily word count minimums.
Every weekday I write a blog. Then, I have a goal of writing a minimum of 1500 words of fiction daily. I keep track of it all via an Excel spreadsheet.
I Published 3 books in 2020. So far, I’ve published 4 books in 2021, and have 2 more on the way.
For 2022, I expect to publish at least 2 books. But depending on how much work I get done and how I choose to promote everything, there could be three or four times that number.
Getting all these books done this year has been awesome. Likewise, completing the plotting for my 5th and final Void Incursion novel, four more Forgotten Fodder novels, and the first 3 of 5 probable novels in my new Savagespace series has felt amazing. That sense of completion is empowering.
For a hobbyist, completing work is one thing. But for the professional, it’s another matter. To make a living with your art, you have to get shit done. When you don’t – you’ve nothing to offer.
I love my work. There is a joy I get in writing that I do not feel from anything else. Whatever topic I’m writing about – getting it done and sharing it with the world lets me feel like my most authentic, complete, self.
Is it perfect? Who can say? But if I wait for even my own definition of perfect rather than getting done – I’ll never know. And neither will anybody else.
Done is better than perfect. Whatever your art might be – keep at it and get it done.
Thank you for being part of my ongoing journey, for joining me, and for inspiring me and my craft.
This is the one-hundred and twenty-fourth article exploring the ongoing creative process. Please take a moment to check out the collection of my published works, which can be found here.
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