Reading the rememberence for The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and what V.E. Schwab stated rung true to me. She writes: “I think of stories as pots on a stove. That is to say, as the culmination of many ingredients, put over low heat and left to stew. A setting. A character’s ambition. A pivotal moment…put into the pot one by one until they being to mic and mels and become a meal. A story, ready to be told.”
She goes on to say that while working on the book, it took her so long that she realised she would die before she ever wrote it. That in the “pursuit of making it perfect, I would make nothing. And the sadness I felt at the idea was enough to shake me from my fear. After all, there is no such thing as perfect, only the effot, the honesty.”
That’s often what I remind myself of when writing a book. If I wait until it’s “perfect” it will never be done, cause I can’t attain “perfect” as none of us are that. But I overcome the fear of not being good enough, or having stories that no one will like and decide to tell them anyway. At least one person will like my stories that I tell. There are books I’ve read that I have loved, and had thought they were just about perfect, that nothing needed to be changed, added or deleted. Then there are books that I didn’t care for as much, or thought a part here or there could have been done differently. You can’t please everyone. Going back to the pot on the stove, there are some ingredients that people just don’t like. So, some stories won’t be liked by people. And that’s okay. Tell your story anyway. Don’t wait around till it’s perfect, cause as V.E. Schwab said, you will die before you ever write it.
Danielle Nowell's Thoughts and Other Random Things 