The Perfection Quest

I watched The Black Swan last night. Mind-bending.

The movie probably will probably horrify ballet aficionados. It is not really about ballet but rather the obsession to achieve perfection. Natalie Portman plays the lead character, Nina Sayers, to something very close to perfection oddly enough. The movie has interwoven themes on many levels and keeps you thinking long after you leave the theater. This is not the best movie I have seen this year, but easily the most thought provoking. What a relief from the thoughtless drivel Hollywood usually shoots at us through a fire hose.

I will spare you my review of this movie, but as an insecure emerging writer it points to a major battle I face every time I sit down to write, the struggle for perfection of the craft.

When I first started seriously writing fiction I quickly found out there are lots of rules. To be a writer you must first learn the craft.

• Omit needless words.
• Avoid flashbacks.
• Maintain tense.
• Avoid adjectives and adverbs.
• Create natural sounding dialog.
• Show, don't tell.
• And so on.

The rules are legion. So we learn them as best we can and start writing until we finish our story. But then I find out, I am not done. I must revise and revise again until the work is finished.

When is it done? When it’s perfect. When is it perfect? When it is done.

As a new writer we walk right up to this bear trap and step on it. We have works that we massage and massage, following the rules ever more closely. But yet we are never satisfied. If we let anyone read it we get polite reviews.

Perhaps finally we have created a story that is perfectly crafted. But yet we know it is not ready. We continue to revise.

What is wrong?

In our obsession to achieve literary perfection we failed to notice the elephant in the room. What is missing is emotion. Our story may be written perfectly (or not J) but it does not engage the reader.

Does it make the reader cry? Laugh? Feel fear, sadness, sympathy, empathy, happiness, satisfaction, foreboding, or whimsy? No?

In those things lies perfection. Without emotion in a story the only thing left is boredom. In fiction, perfection is reader engagement.

Go back and reread some of your favorite fiction you read earlier in your life. I bet now as a writer you can find lots of craft flaws. But yet the story is successful. The reader wants to turn the pages. Perfection.

The lesson here is to find those reader engagement points in the beginning to determine whether or not the story as it exists is worth pursuing at all. If not, do not flog the dead horse. Put it on the shelf and move on to something else and do not invest any more valuable time on a dead end. Your life is too short.

This abandoned story can be pushed into the back of your mind where it will be worked on without your knowledge. Some day the story may emerge from the ashes anew. Our brains are wonderful devices to aid our writing.

As a writer I still need to strive for perfection, but I need to understand first what perfection is.

Like Nina Sayers I cannot rest peacefully until I find it. To me The Black Swan has a happy ending. Many would disagree. As a writer and fellow artist do yourself a favor and go see it.