Reaching For Perfection

A piece of dialogue in a long-ago movie popped into my head when I saw this poster. Ain't nothin' gonna be perfect in this life. I'm sorry to say I cannot remember which movie or the situation that brought forth this comment or who said it.That doesn't really matter. It's the words themselves that should have an impact on each one of us. 

Writers can attest to the fact that there is nothing perfect in this life we are leading on earth. Wouldn't it be great if it could be so? Seems to me there are degrees of that nothing perfect category. We have close to perfect, hardly perfect, near perfect, so perfect, not perfect and more. 

What if everything was perfect? What if you sold every story you submitted? What if every novel you wrote was an overnight best seller? Sounds wonderful? Hold on a minute. If all that you touched turned to gold, what would you have left to strive for? What incentive would there be to write the very best story? Why bother to write a good story if you know anything you write will sell? 

So, back to reality. Perfection is pretty hard to achieve. Glitches of all kinds rain on our parade. Sometimes we feel like there is one bump in the road after another. Nothing goes right. We hate what we write. We receive multiple rejections before one acceptance. Critiques of our work have more negatives than positives. We throw up our hands in disgust or lay our heads on the desk and shed a few tears. 

Yep, we all get down when things go wrong. The little girl with the wheelbarrow is right. Things do eventually come around to allow us a more positive view. Maybe not right away but eventually. All you and I need to weather through times that are tough is patience. A small word when standing all alone but so very important. Those who read this blog regularly know that my two keywords are patience and perseverance.  

It's not an easy task to be patient and wait for the good things to come to us. It takes grit and determination. It means you must wade through the bad times before you find that field of flowers waiting for you. Our writing world is filled with ups and downs. As that piece of dialogue so nicely illustrates--Ain't nothin' gonna be perfect in this life.  Even so, I think you'll find enough bits and pieces that are almost perfect to keep you motivated to continue writing. Patience does pay off.