Books and Picasso

I'm sometimes asked about the highs and lows of writing. I guess the biggest buzz has to be the first time a novel that you've written is sitting in front of you. Must be the closest a man can come to giving birth! But the elation doesn't last. They say any work of art is never completed, it's only ever abandoned. Suddenly, there's a line in the sand: all those imperfections that you want to eradicate and you can't. There are the typos you can't now correct. Why didn't you or the editor spot them?? Every new novel I read these days seems to have at least three typos! Then you do a public reading and you wish you'd changed this bit or that. Like a child, your book has a life of its own and you slowly lose control. I imagine even Picasso looked at his finished paintings and thought: I wish I'd done that line slightly differently. Yet, he had to live with that. Probably shrugged his shoulders and thought: oh well, lets rustle up another masterpiece. So lets end on that note. What's good enough for Picasso is good enough for me. The Wordsmith's Tale