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.
Write that book.
FOR WRITERS
There is lots of great info about writing to be found on the web. And lots of sad, misleading, and discouraging stuff, too.
Here’s a tip: read only that which inspires you and makes you want to do your best work. Sites that make you feel anxious, stupid, inferior, or hopeless will kill your spirit and destroy your writing. You don’t need that.
Another tip: Guidebooks have their place, but if you are at all like me, thinking about the writing is fatal to writing a first draft of a story. My best work comes when I am in the writing – deep in the characters and walking around in their world. The only way I can write is to shut out all those guide book suggestions about through-lines and character arcs and theme and let my subconscious do its wild, unpredictable thing. Rules are for revisions.