Avoiding Perfection

Hi folks,

Lovely day here, hot and sunshiny. I worked hard this week. I'm weaving the deepest magic I know in what I'm writing right now. I keep comforting myself by avoiding perfection. I feel turned inside out with all the complexity of the work: reviewing scenes over and over again, quibbling over line breaks, changing a word and then putting it back for the tenth time -- and then the twentieth, cutting away my "darlings". shoring up the sub-plots, making sure the transitions are better than adequate and reaching the eloquent levels, smything the words with every bit of blarney stone, Texas tall tale juju I can toss on...

I don't know about you, but there is something inside me that wants my work to be perfect. I'm begging for something to rise up in me and shake the foundations of the world. I hunger to write a book that lasts through the ages, relevant for all time.

Uh, I think I've set the bar pretty high, and I'm cool with that. But all this lofty principle has a biting downside, it can really kill my creative flow. How do I avoid creative death by freezing myself in the headlights of the potentiality of doing something unendingly meaningful? Believe me, the pressure is unbearable.

I've found a solution.I've learned to navigate to the middle ground between the tortured artistic diva who must create an earth-shattering work to be satisfied and the ten shekel shirt, snake-oil hawker, TWILIGHT junkie, and talented hack writer corrupted by the glitz of possible $$$.

Believe it or not, I find genius in the middle ground between these two gals. I find fire there, and I'm jogging down that tight-rope to find my best book.

Are you taking a balanced approach to your work? One that gives you the freedom to actually achieve something? Be kind to yourself. Look for your own middle ground this week and see how that gets the creative inferno going. Seize the day.

This week I'm posting the cover of my newest book 'cause I think it is nifty. It's called THE TRUTH ABOUT UNICORNS written by me and illustrated by Necdet Yilmaz. Artist friends, do yourself a favor and check out Necdet's website, very cool-O. The book should be out in a few weeks.





This bridge will only take you halfway there, to those mysterious lands you long to see. Through gypsy camps and swirling Arab fair, and moonlit woods where unicorns run free. So come and walk awhile with me and share the twisting trails and wonderous worlds Ive known. But this bridge will only take you halfway there. The last few steps you have to take alone. Shel Siverstein