Perfect: Enemy Of The Good

I wanted to pass along Dwight Garner's recent article from the New York Times, which praises novelists who produce a solid book every few years (e.g., Roth, Bellow) and questions those who labor for a decade in an attempt to produce a masterpiece (e.g., Franzen, Eugenides). Of course, Philip Roth serves as a poor example in this case since his novels are both masterful and frequent. Nonetheless, Garner makes a point all writers should remain mindful of: whether you are are putting together a novel or polishing a story you intend to submit to ALR (whose regular submission period opens in two weeks), perfect fiction does not exist. Raymond Carver always received extensive revisions from his editor, Gordon Lish; Balzac rewrote every one of his novels through round after round of proofs; Proust's In Search of Lost Time (a favorite of both myself and Jennifer Egan) is filled with errors and internal contradictions. In other words, your writing doesn't need to be perfect in order to find a publisher, only good. So quit worrying about whether the sky in your story should be "azure" or "cerulean" and start sending your work out, preferably to us.