In the car, my five-year-old asked us to tell her a story.
Once upon a time, I said . . . and . . . I got nothin. My husband glanced over at me with a look that said, "You're supposed to be a children's book author."
Okay. Once upon a time there was . . . okay. wait. Once upon a time there was a woman who . . . um . . . who looked like a squash. Yes. A butternut squash. Well. And she looked so much like a butternut squash that everyone thought that's what she was . . .
Another look from my spouse. I tried to ignore it. The butternut squash lady went on a walk and met a man who looked like a piece of bacon and twin tomato-looking people. And then they became soup.
"That is the worst story ever told," said spouse.
"You got it wrong," said Five. "They didn't become soup. They became a family."
A family?
"They became a family. And they lived in a castle and were royalty. The end," said Five.
As long as everyone is a family in the end and there is some queen or king involvement, Five is happy.
—a recent journal entry
The Perfect Book
When I was nine, my grandmother made me a quilt. Pink gingham linked twelve patches, each with a hand embroidered flower and script underneath: Sweet Pea, Pansy, Morning Glory. Except Grandma stitched Glory Morning.
I didn’t notice the switch until she pointed it out. “Only God can make something perfect,” she said.
Of course, my grandmother was right.
And she was wrong, too.
Her quilt, even without the Morning Glory flip-flop, would not have taken a State Fair prize, nor did it adhere to any idealized notion of essential quiltishness. It was not, in that sense, a perfect quilt.
But it was a perfect quilt for me. It was warm and pink (oh, rapturous pink!) and an obvious declaration of love, which was exactly what I needed when I was nine. (And now, too, except now I’m more of a barn-red girl.)
So many of us, when we set out to write, start with an idealized notion of what a poem or a story or a novel should be. How we aspire to write the Perfect Book! It motivates us. And it scares the crap out of us. Some of us get so scared that we can’t write at all.
Forget Perfect.
There is no Perfect Book.
But there is a novel to be written that is perfectly you.
And when you write it, it will be so right and true and real that people are going to want to read it.
Somewhere, right now, there is a young reader waiting for that very book. For her it will be as warm as a quilt. Every word, proof that somebody else in the world gets her, in all her wild (or quiet) imperfection.
Maybe your book will even be pink. Or not.
In any case, that book will be perfect for her.