Let’s talk about perfection! I think everyone, at some point in their careers, wishes for things to go perfectly. Even when logically people know that the best things that are worth having almost never come easy and that the things that come easy almost never last, people still want a smooth road to their destination. When we allow that need for perfection to keep us from going after our goals and achieving what we ultimately want it becomes more of a hindrance than a help.
I know all about striving for perfection but when I look at where that has honestly gotten me thus far, I don’t particularly like what I see. I have so many projects, books, concepts that are formulated in my mind. I plan them out, then re-plan them, and then outline the ideas to map everything out about two or three times. Then, because things still don’t seem to be fitting perfectly together just the way that I want them to, those plans, books, and concepts get stored away somewhere in a file cabinet where most ideas go to die (or get dug up years later). I think I’ve had at least two ideas of television shows that I never fleshed out and actually developed because I couldn’t get the ideas to perfectly come together in my mind and then years later I see television shows almost mirroring those ideas already created by someone else who probably didn’t wait for their idea to be completely perfect to get it done.
This is what happens when you wait on perfection. Someone else has a similar idea and they just simply get it done, perfect or not. I’ve been working really hard lately on not having to have every idea that comes to mind be perfect for me to get started working on it. I realize that perfection is not always the best thing because nothing can ever truly be perfect. There’s always going to be a tweak that could be made here, and possibly another minor adjustment there, and as a writer even when you hand over your masterpiece that may be perfect in your eyes to an editor, there is undoubtedly going to be something that that editor will see that won’t be perfect in their eyes and will need to be changed anyway.
So if you are sitting on an idea for a book, for a program, for a brand, for a song, or anything that you’re passionate about, stop sitting on it. Just say to hell with perfection and get started on it. No one will ever see it anyway if you don’t just put it out there, perfect or not. Odds are the less perfect the better!
Jimmetta Carpenter
Writer/Editor
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