But, for me, it's not about perfection. I'm not sure what that is. I don't aspire to it (and now I'm wondering what that admission says about me). I'm not sure the word can apply to writing, or any artwork. Each time I revisit something, whether it's mine or someone else's, it's different. How can perfection exist for something that changes with every view, that changes with the viewer?
She says "never being satisfied" - which does suggest beating yourself up over not being perfect, rather than acknowledging that you wrote what you were then. It may not be what you are now, but that doesn't mean you need to be dissatisfied with it, nor does it mean that you can't aspire to do better.
After 20-odd years of software development, it is still the case that every time I finish some significant piece of work I look back and acknowledge that if I did it again I would do it differently. I've spent less time actively trying to be a writer, but I can see that every piece of writing would be different if I sat down to write it again - but that's because I'm a different person by then.
There is an element of dissatisfaction involved, in any creation I've made, during creation and when I first sit back at the end. But after I gain some distance from it that can change. If I was never able to find satisfaction at that point, I think I would find something else to do. Perhaps that shows me as selfish, I do what makes me happy.
I suppose I can see this:
Quote:
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Zadie S. seems to be expressing the humble fact of writing as work: it requires sustained daily effort and isn't exalted in comparison to other kinds of work.
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especially after spending months in editing mode rather than creation. But since I write for a hobby, if I didn't find more magic in writing (the creation part anyway) than I did in reading, then I wouldn't write. I don't interpret the magic I find in writing as something exalted, it's a very personal thing, very much like the magic in reading - but, for me, more intense and extended. (I think it found a comfortable home in my obsessive personality.
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