There is no such thing as perfection; not in nature, not in science, and certainly not in art. Everything that exists in our reality is flawed. Even the most elegant of designs exists in a universe where, sooner or later, one must accept the concept of “good enough.”

I know that is a hard pill for any of us to swallow, but it is the truth. No matter how beautiful your child is, it is not nor will it ever be perfect. No matter how many times you go over your house with that white glove, there will always be dirt. And no matter how many times I re-edit my books for redistribution, there will always be mistakes.

And that’s Okay. Sometimes the sum of who we are can be measured more accurately in our failures. I wouldn’t want to be perfect. How boring would that be? Anyone will tell you the best characters in a book are flawed. They have prejudices and preconceived notions. They have unreasonable expectations. They are inappropriate. They are self righteous. In a word they are interesting.

I will always have too many commas in my stories. I will always incorrectly use words that sound the same but have a different meanings than what was intended in the sentence. I will always use big words, even unnecessarily. These flaws are inherent in my writing style . Editors get a lot of them, but they’re not perfect either. We work together to tackle enough flaws to keep the reader from being derailed in enjoying the story.

Last time I checked, that was pretty much the whole point.

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