Writing Revelations

I was writing, as writers often do, when I had a revelation. Feeling flashed before my eyes in an epiphany, something I should have seen long ago:

There is no such thing as perfect writing.

Published or non-published, poetry or prose, there will always be something to fix. There will always be something to criticize. Years from now we will look back and want to change a hundred different things. Characters, a sentence, a word. There will always be a way to make it “better.”

Enlightening as this is, what does this mean? Are we to simply give up writing, if we will never reach our own standards? Of course not. But how do we tackle this?

Perhaps the secret to writing is moving past our perfectionism to create something greater than perfection. What is greater than perfection? The human spirit. What makes us human? Our flaws. It is our flaws that grow us and shape us into the unique beings that we are, and it is our mistakes that we learn from. Writing is risky. We all know that. We have to put ourselves on a pedestal. Characters that we’ve shaped and modified, who have become a part of us, must be shipped to the world through ink, to be loved or hated by all who perceive them.

So, maybe, writing isn’t about being perfect. We have to find something better than that. Maybe the best writers put passion on the page and embrace the flaws of their own words. Only then will a 9 become a 10, a 10 an 11, an 11 a 100. When we accept our imperfections and share them with the world in this new positive light, we discover a deeper part of ourselves, and that is what shines through over all else.

Keep writing writers, as we fight the revelation of the human spirit in its rawest form.