We all fall for the lure of perfection.  Especially in fiction.  We all sometimes use it as an excuse for dropping an otherwise brilliant idea which is starting to feel a bit too much like hard work ;-)

Over the years I've written a lot of factual articles where good solid competence earned me more sales than a relentless search for perfection.

How do you get competent?  (Which is one step on the way to that elusive perfection.)  By making mistakes and owning them, by learning from those mistakes.

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       "I can't do it!"  A frustrated wail from my Grandaughter makes me drag the semi-retired tutor out of retirement.

   Maybe there's a lesson to be learned here.  One which applies equally well to writing.

   My grandaughter - who proudly proclaims she's four and a half now, and quite grown-up - desperately wants to be able to draw a train.  She's a big fan of the Thomas the tank Engine series.  She has a train-themed bedroom.  Half the time she thinks she's a train and refers to her bed as her engine shed.

   So she tries to draw one but then gets frustrated and scribbles all over it instead because it looks wrong.  She gets really mad with herself because her self confidence is at odds with the current reality.

   We've been explaining that you have to learn, that nobody can draw perfectly straight away.  I am not the world's worst artist, but I can draw - albeit badly - things which are at least recognisable.  So I've been trying to teach her it's okay to draw badly at first.

   We sat in the kitchen with a whiteboard and a wipe-off marker, which encourages lots of drawing.  She seems to like the kitchen, so if she feels relaxed there it's a good place to start.

   "What sort of train do you want to draw?"

   "An express, with a tender full of coal."

   "Okay.  I can't draw properly either, but between us we'll make a drawing that at least looks something like a train.  What's the first thing you notice about an express?"

   "Big wheels...  And smaller ones for the tender."

   "Okay..."  I drew a fairly straight line along the bottom of the board.  "That's the track, to help keep the wheels level when we draw them.  How many wheels?"

   "Six, and four on the tender."

   "Okay."  I drew three rough circles, all starting at the bottom so they came back to the track, then two more where the tender was going to be.  "We can only see half of them from the side,which is the way we're doing this drawing."

   She nodded.

   "And the connecting rods."  I sketched in two rough lines linking the big wheels, at the classic forty five degree angle.  I deliberately didn't bother with spokes for the wheels.   Just circles with a dot in the middle. "Do we need these on the tender wheels?"

   "No."Then slipping into a scathing tone, "Some of the cheaper toys don't even have them on the drive wheels, which is wrong.  Now draw the tank."

   So I drew the boiler, with a circular face to lift it away from a purely flat drawing, but it was too long and thin.

   "That doesn't look right, Grandad."

   "It's not, so we'll wipe it off and start again.  But we can keep the wheels can't we?"

   "Yes, the wheels are good."

   So I drew a bigger face and took the boiler back from that, with a half circle at the cab end to show the curve.  Then I added a cab, with windows and door, very simple, and a ladder to climb up.  I wiped and redrew the windows and door.

   "That's better.  Now draw the tender."

   I deliberately drew it too tall and she made me change it.  Obviously the little lass has a very clear picture in her mind, which is a good sign for both drawing and writing.

   "Now the dome and the funnel."  She ordered.  I did them with a hint of a curve as well, but no fancy shading.  "And there's some smoke coming out."

   "So there you have it, Kid.  A train.  Not a very good drawing, but people can see what it's supposed to be."

   She looked at it for a minute, clearly thinking it through.

   "You need to put some coal in the tender, otherwise it won't get very far."

   Coal was added and she was happy.  Then we wiped it all off and she drew me a cat.  A cat's face anyway, with big teeth.  With big paws underneath and pointy ears at the top.  Rather stylised but recognisable.  I'd say she has a reasonable eye for what is most noticeable.

   I think I'll get her a whiteboard of her own and a few pens.  She's still a  bit hard on pens, scrubbing them across the page and damaging the tips, but the easy slide of the whiteboard seems to be helping her with that.

   She may be like me, happy playing at it rather than taking it too seriously, but she's enjoying it more now she knows it doesn't have to be perfect.

   If she starts showing real talent I'll get my Sister to teach her a thing or two.

   ===

My son does some podcasting on motivational/life issues. The one he just uploaded was about goal setting for the coming year and to get a place to start, he talked about failure and our universal dislike of the beast.

We "know" there is a right and wrong and that we can either get it right or get it wrong. We all too often label the wrong as failure when we might want to consider that the wrong is a lesson and we can learn from it.

In the arts, there is wiggle room for the wrong to actually be style. I'm just going to put that here for right now.

Fear of failure is the biggest obstacle to success.  (Though it has to be admitted, the second biggest is being complacent about failure.)

Feel the fear.  And do it anyway.

Good advice as ever, Gyppo