Perfection and Writing

Emily recently received a book titled Being Perfect by Anna Quindlen. It's a great, short read that we can all relate to. At one point, she talks about the concept of lockstep :

"What perfection requires is a kind of lockstep. Look at that word; imagine it in your mind's eye, the forced march of the fearful, the physical opposite of the skip and the jump. Doesn't it sound like something to avoid at all costs?

Lockstep is easier, but there's another reason why you cannot succumb to it. Because nothing great or even good ever came of it. Sometimes I meet young writers, and I like to share with them the overwhelming feeling I have about our work, the feeling that every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird, and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason ever to write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time ever has. That is her own personality, her own voice. If she is doing Fitzgerald imitations, she can stay home. If she is giving readers what she thinks they want instead of what she is, she should stop typing.

But if her books reflet her character, the authentic shape of her life and her mind, then she may well be giving readers a new and wonderful gift. Giving it to herself, too."

I love that last paragraph! It frees us to write, to teach, to counsel, to doctor, to live! We have something to give to the world that only we can give. What a marvelous, liberating, invigorating thought. And I think we truly know who we are as we focus not on ourselves, but on the One who made us. Through the process of knowing Him - concentrating on, serving, worshipping Him - we find out who we are. Now, if we will do it! Set the world on fire!