Quick baseball fact: when a batter reaches first base on an error or on a “fielder’s choice,” it is not counted as a hit in the game’s official statistics. I learned this recently, and it sort of blew my mind. Baseball is one of the only sports that holds each individual player up to the standard of perfection.
I understand why, but I don’t like it. There’s one thing that’s been hardest for me to learn in my short foray into adulthood, and it is this: perfection does not exist.
A few years back (before I started writing) I was watching a movie and had what, for me, was a kind of epiphany: the movie could have been made differently. Other actors could have been cast, scenes combined or eliminated. I had always thought of movies, books, television shows, works of art as finished things. Unquestionable. Conclusive. Established. That’s the reason I never imagined myself being an author when I was young. How could I create something like that? Something so inviolable? There was hardly any point in trying.
But of course, that idea couldn’t be farther from the truth. Every man-made creation is flawed. And when it comes to books and other forms of art, the flaws are some of the best parts. The understanding that, in art, perfection is totally non-existent (and only blowhards would say otherwise) was so freeing. I began to find imperfection everywhere, even in the movies and books that I loved. It gave me the courage to try writing myself.
How much more interesting is the world when you can constantly be thinking about why some things are presented in certain ways, or how they could be presented differently? How much BETTER is something great when it has withstood artistic critique? And I’m not just talking about The New York Times Book Review, here. New York Magazine’s Gossip Girl episode recaps can be every bit as insightful and vicious as Michiko Kakutani.
It’s freeing to understand that imperfection is all around us. That our books, our blogs, our tweets, our newspapers could all be different. Better, worse, more poetic, more complex. The world is full of people just trying to get it as right as possible. That’s what makes it fun to keep trying, right?
What about you? Did you put books and authors on a pedestal when you were young, too? Do you have other favorite book/movie/t.v./art review outlets on-line you can point me to?
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
This realization both scared me and freed me. First, realizing that my writing was full of imperfections kind of made me a frantic mess. Not that I didn’t know it before, but the perfectionist in me wants everything to be Just Right. But realizing that other works were imperfect, too, made me feel like, Well at least I’m in good company.
It is pretty terrifying in that way, I agree! But hearing authors whose books I’ve loved say that they would go back and change some things now, that definitely makes me feel better :)
I get excited when I see imperfection in some of my favorite books. It makes success seem so much more attainable.
Totally. When something can be flawed but you love it anyway, that makes it more real and achievable!
YES! :D
“perfection does not exist” –> this is something I should have put over my bed and repeat at least a thousand times to myself before falling asleep, just to remind myself that 1) it’s okay to fail from times to times, 2) even if what I do is not 100% it might be perfect for me or for someone else and, 3) imperfection in the books I read and re-read mean that maybe someday a reader will be able to look past the little things in my own novels to just enjoy the story…
Great post, Sarah!
Yay! It would be a great saying to stitch on a pillow, right? That’s just one of the realizations that made artistic life a little more manageable :)
I had the exact same thing. Novels, movies, music. It was released when finished. When there was nothing left to do. It was set in stone. Now I know that works of art are never finished. They are abandoned. We could spend a lifetime writing a single novel, endlessly tweaking it, adding scenes or deleting, because it is never really done. But we decide, at some stage, enough is enough and now it’s time for something else. Our current work gets abandoned because it is polished enough and a new idea is crying for out attention.
I think my most shocking movie moment was A.I. It was a great film and it had a fantastic ending. But then it just kept going. The last half hour totally ruined it. Maybe it was Spielberg trying to make the ending a bit happier, but it made no sense.
Realising I disagreed with the master himself and thought I could improve his work, was a wakeup call. Maybe I should stop nagging and write my own stuff if I knew it all so well. ;o)
And to drive the point home, here is a blog post I wrote on one of the hardest things in writing. Killing our Darlings.
http://www.villiasgeirsson.com/2012/08/29/killing-your-darlings/
(no spamming or plugging intended…)
Yes! Such an important thing to keep in mind, and like you said, sometimes the flaws make the thing better! It’s also inspiring to see that something really profound and wonderful is also full of imperfections. Also, not gonna lie, I think it’s kinda fun finding typos and such in finished books. It’s like where’s waldo, haha.
I don’t read too many media review outlets, but I know my friends really enjoyed some of the Television w/o Pity reviews back in college. And Oh No They Didnt comment sections are always fun for just regular pop culture commentary.