Perfection

News from the coalface.

I have seen a number of notes and posts on Substack lately, all repeating the same theme. Writers should not aim for perfection. I happen to disagree, and I would go further. To use a technical term, I would say that is bollocks.

I am editing four books at the moment. If that sounds bonkers, just bear with me. Forget the four books, just think of the editing, and why there is nothing wrong with aiming for perfection.

This one is the bane of my life, or has been.

Actually, let’s go back to the number four, because you will notice that number scribbled on the cover. That is because this is the 4^th editing proof, and I am still working on it. I am still working on it because I feel in my heart, my inner core, my very being, that it was not ready to be seen by readers.

My apologies to Anja at this point because she has a copy of this version, or at least I think it is this version. To be honest, I’ve lost track.

Gate in the Shadows, now known as the Git, because it has been a proper little git.

Let’s go back in time, about a year ago, when I was reading all sorts of comments from other writers and supposed experts. I was bombarded by advice, and much of that advice was, you guessed it, don’t aim for perfection. Your book will never be perfect. If you have got this far, publish it, and get on with the next one. You will never attain perfection, so stop fussing over that bloody book and just publish it.

Being as green as the greenest grass in the world of publishing, I caved in to this repeated message, and I published it. There was a little bell ringing at the back of my mind saying it wasn’t ready, but I blanked it out because that little bell was telling me not to publish until it was perfect, or at least as near to perfect as I can make it.

Oh, how I wish I had listened to that little bell.

You see, this book is part of a series, seven of them written at this point, and I was still toying with how they all fit together. I wasn’t happy with Oliver’s Voice as the first in the series, for reasons that are now incomprehensible, because Oliver was always the first, and always will be. But I had a bang on the head or something, and that gave me the brainwave to make GitS (the Git) the first instead of the second, and I was still playing around with this idea when all these people told me to just publish the bloody thing.

So I did.

The lesson here folks, is to ignore whatever advice you have been given, whatever you have heard, whatever you have read, if in your heart you think it is wrong. Actually, let’s be more specific here, if in your heart, you know it is wrong.

I went on to publish Oliver’s Voice as the second, and I didn’t like that either, and it was only late last year when I came to my senses. I asked for opinions on here about printing on white or cream paper, and there was an overwhelming preference for cream, but that meant unpublishing both books to change from white pages to cream pages.

Thank you so much to those who made me do this.

Because I was unpublishing, that was a chance to put right what I got wrong. Oliver’s Voice was tweaked and put back where it belongs, as the first, and I then started work on Gate in the Shadows.

The Git.

Months later, I might finally be there, and now we come to why I have four books on the go. Like many writers, if I try to revise and edit something I have written, I have to leave it for several weeks before coming back to it. If I don’t, I see the words I think should be there instead of the words that are actually on the page (literally on the page because I can only work on printed copies). The glaring errors that get through if I read it too soon are truly shocking, and other writers will back me up here.

You just do not see these things.

At all.

I can’t just sit and file my nails for weeks on end until I have forgotten a whole book, so I have to either write something new, or work on editing others.

I did both.

Because I have a series to work through, I knuckled down and worked on the others, which are at various stages of completion. For reasons known only to a skilled psychiatrist, I also wrote a new novel, different to the series, a classic ghost story, which has added to the editing pile.

Last week, I finished the revision of GitS (the Git) and bashed all the changes and tweaks into the keyboard. Quite a lot of changes, like entire chapters sort of changes.

Hmmm.

That little bell again.

Next job was to work on the description. How to describe this book?

Hmmm.

There was that bell, and I couldn’t write the description because something was still not right. This time I did not ignore the bell. Instead, I asked why it was ringing. I already knew the answer, I knew what was not right, and I had known all along. Why it has taken until now for me to realise, I have no idea. As I said, probably because I am an idiot.

So I went a bit nuts with the bits I already knew I wasn’t happy with, drew a big line through them, and I started again, on fresh paper. I won’t go into the whats and whys or we will be here all bloody day, but almost all were written years ago, were assuming the reader is stupid, and needed to go in the bin.

Darlings killed, big style.

All this has been because I was aiming for perfection. I am probably happy with Gate in the Shadows now, probably, and might even stop calling it the Git and publish it. I do not regard it as perfect by any means. I am not so full of myself to ever think I could write a perfect book, but it is only by aiming for perfection that I have been critical enough to keep fixing and revising and tweaking until that little bell has finally stopped ringing.

So when people give you their words of wisdom and tell you not to aim for perfection, you may wish to ignore them, and listen to that little bell instead.

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Thank you for reading.