Practice Makes Practice

I want to be better. That’s the reason I got an MFA, the reason I read craft books, the reason I teach and edit on the side. It’s why I work in multiple genres and experiment with POV and structure. It’s why I’m a perfectionist, why my books only feel done because they’re in print and I can’t revise them anymore. I know I’m not alone in this. It’s not something we writers talk about at cocktail parties, but I think it’s safe to assume that we all would like our next books to be better than our last. I’ve had friends saddened and overwhelmed by deadlines that don’t give them enough time to make the book they’re writing great, only “good enough.” Writing a new book feels like learning to write all over again. And this takes time. Every day I sit down to write I feel like a beginner. I know I’m not alone in this. Katherine Patterson once told me that she feels like a beginner with every new book she writes because nobody has written that book—there is no template, no survival manual. Kurt Vonnegut once said, “When I write, I feel like an armless,…