This is what I learned on my quest to write the perfect book
And what you can learn too
The perfect book. Which author doesn’t dream of writing one? Well, I do. Or at least dreamed.
Why the verb in the past? Calm down, we will get to that part, but first we need to go back in time a little, to December of 2020: I was a young woman with a mind full of stories to tell, however, completely lost in the art of words.
I didn’t know anything about writing, I just had an immense desire to put my stories in the world that practically tormented me to be written. But writing was not enough. It had to be the perfect book. But how would I do that?
So, just like a good heroine in any story answering the “Call to Adventure”, I found my mentor and my faithful squires and left the “Ordinary World” ready — or not — to face the dangers of this journey completely unknown to me.
With the help of my mentor, I learned the path to the Yellow Brick Road and wrote my first novel. I’ve never been so happy to finish something. After all, I had never finished writing anything, let alone an entire novel. I even cried (don’t judge me).
However, something was missing and I couldn’t say what it was right away, I only knew one thing: the book was not “THE” perfect book.
Needless to say, I was devastated when I realized this.
But did I give up? Not at all. So I did the only thing I could do: I studied. Knowledge is intoxicating, or at least it is for me. I used all available resources and media: from renowned writing books to videos and lives on YouTube.
And, after gathering all this knowledge that I didn’t have before, I did something that I don’t advise anyone: I wrote a second edition of my first novel (don’t worry, I didn’t rewrite it, I just added more scenes).
It got better? No doubt. Was it perfect? No, it wasn’t.
That’s when I realized: I was never going to achieve the perfect book.
There is no such thing in the real world.
I was never going to be able to fulfill my dream of having the perfect book.
And, as strange as it may seem, this realization freed me from chains that I didn’t know existed in my wrists and feet. I breathed a sigh of relief after a long time.
But that doesn’t mean we should stop moving forward and improving our writing. On the contrary, we must run after the horizon no matter how far it moves away with each step we take.
We just can’t be hostage to a (literally) impossible dream.
This is what I learned on my quest to write the perfect book.
