Chasing the horizon

Once it’s done, to put it away until you can read it with new eyes. Finish the short story, print it out, then put it in a drawer and write other things. When you’re ready, pick it up and read it, as if you’ve never read it before. If there are things you aren’t satisfied with as a reader, go in and fix them as a writer: that’s revision.

Thus spake Neil Gaiman, and I have proven the value of this advice by re-reading ‘Glint’, some weeks after it was ‘finished’, only to find that it still needs more polish, and is as clunky as a wooden bucket in more than a few places. However, while I am polishing, I shall bear in mind my other favourite piece of Gaiman advice, which immediately follows the first. Nothing is ever perfect. We have to let it go sometime.

Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.

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