A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

It’s late at night, and I’m staring at my laptop, editing my story for the 7th time.

Editing is an understatement, really. It’s more like I’m rewriting it. The submission deadline is tomorrow, and yet here I am, scraping everything and starting over from scratch.

The story was already fine by its 3rd edit, really — the grammatical errors were all fixed and the misspellings were all cleared up. All it needed was some tweaks in the writing here and there, and the story would’ve been good for submission.

But the more I read it, the more things I found that I could’ve done differently. And the more people read it, the more things they found that I could’ve done differently. And those things continued to pile up and up until, well, until I felt like I needed the rewrite the story completely.

It’s really late, though, and I still have a big test tomorrow. If I somehow finish this brand new draft by tonight, I’m going to have to submit it unedited, and the university publication is not going to be happy about that.

I take a deep breath and close my Microsoft Word. I open my e-mail, drag the original draft into the attachments, and press send.

The story turned out fine.

It got published in the school newsletter, but since nobody reads that, I didn’t get the criticism I dreaded. In fact, for the people who did read it, they actually really liked it! I got tons of compliments, and I was even able to add the piece to my writing portfolio, which got me multiple opportunities.

Four years later, I’m still really proud of that story. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever written.

But that never would’ve happened if I didn’t take that deep breath and closed that Microsoft Word.

Every time something like that happens, I’m reminded of a quote I came across by French poet Paul Valéry, who said:

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

No work of art is ever perfect. That’s because art is supposed to be a reflection of humanity, and no human being is ever perfect. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to let go of your work and release it to the world.

If you keep on editing until it’s perfect, your work will never see sunlight.

I get it. You want your work to be the best it can be. You’re a critic to other artists, but most of all, you’re the biggest critic to yourself. You read your writing or see your art and see everything that could’ve been different. Better.

That’s a good thing. That means you have good taste. You know what makes an artwork great, and you know what makes an artwork falter. That’s a good trait to have. If you didn’t have it, you’d never grow as an artist. You’d just keep producing and producing the same thing, totally unaware of what you can improve on.

But the same thing is going to happen if you never abandon your work. You’d just keep producing and producing the same thing. As an artist, you want a big number of works under your belt. It’s how you get discovered. It’s how you find opportunities. It’s how people see you as you want to be seen — a creator.

Some people are such perfectionists, they end up never letting other people see or read their works. They’re afraid of what the world will say if they do, so they just keep it to themselves.

But you need other people to experience your works. From them, you’ll be able to learn your strengths and your weaknesses, and you’ll be able to apply that to your next project. There is so much other people can pick up on that you can’t, and you need that feedback. Art was meant to be shared.

The great painters weren’t born great. They became great because they painted.

And if you’re scared that if your work isn’t perfect, people will hate it and tear it to shreds, let me tell you this:

People aren’t that nitpicky.

Oh sure, maybe some of them will pick up problems in your piece and discuss it. But if your artwork is truly great, the flaws won’t make them love it any less. Everyone realizes no work of art is perfect, that every film or book or painting is going to have one or two things lackluster about it.

But if you’re confident in your work, and if the good in that work hits a chord with its audience -

Then the good will always, always outweigh the bad.