The Saturday Writing Quote — the pursuit of perfection

“Works of art are not so much finished as abandoned. Perhaps poems can be perfect. A short-short story might even be perfectible, as effective and enjoyable for one reader as the next. But novels and other book-length narratives are great rambling things that always contain some flaws. For works of any length, there comes a point when your continued tinkering won’t improve the whole, but will just trade one set of problems for another.”

— Bruce Holland Rogers, Word Work 246 (2002) (Quoted in Bryan Garner’s blog on Modern American Usage)

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