When will you, can you, write the perfect book?

I spoke, last night, about having not yet written the perfect novel.  I wonder how many authors ever really think they have?  But this morning, my father wrote, and then another (we call her Soup), following up with that train of thought, both asking a version of, Do you see your writing coming closer to the perfect book?



And the answer, honestly, is this:  I am taking more risks.  I am pulling harder on language.  I am going darker and deeper, and coming up lighter; I am balancing more ambiguity for longer stretches; I am working those broader swaths of gray.  I want to achieve a work of art that lasts.  I want to be able to read every line in an entire book aloud and not be swept through—at any point—with the sudden desire to change a word, drop a prefix.



Writing is hard. If I thought I'd mastered it already, I'd be done.  I don't want to be done.  Not yet.