Imperfectionism

Last August, I wrote an article about Imperfectionism for Rogue Project Leader. Imperfectionism is a positive, enthusiastic and productive philosophy, and I wanted to pass it along to any of you who didn't catch the original article the first time. Here's a short excerpt to get you started:

It's amazing how much you can get done in a short amount of time if you don't care whether it's perfect or not. No doubt that sentiment will amuse some readers and disturb others, but I've found it to be true.

As several of you have surely noticed, I am quite content to create things with flaws, mostly because I know I'm going to do so whether I want to or not. That is, I am content to create what I can create, and I try not to insist on that which cannot be done. My satisfaction is based on the presence of something good, not the absence of all flaws.

I just feel bad for perfectionists. They deprive themselves of so much happiness by focusing on the bad rather than rejoicing in the good.

I hope you all enjoy the Imperfectionism article, particularly my NaNoWriMo friends out there, who are elbow-deep in highly imperfect novels. Keep writing!

It's a beautiful thing, this imperfectionism.

G.K. Chesterton & Imperfectionism (Distributism, Part The Next)

A follow-up thought to Andrew Keen's recent critique of the distributist Web 2.0 phenomenon, from none other than the 20th century's greatest rotund British journalist, writer and thinker, G.K. Chesterton (and an echo of my own commitment to imperfectionism)

"It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it is bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them, and that the nation is merely looking on." (from Patriotism and Sport, in All Things Considered)

And now for an interesting counterpoint, also from Chesterton. During Prohibition, GKC was so impressed by the quality of American homebrew (and it's superiority over the then-outlawed mass produced, big name factory beer) that he made a tongue-in-cheek proposal to outlaw commercial production of bread and clothing as a means of improving the quality of both (because people would then make their own).

Have you ever made your own bread or brewed your own beer? Have you ever put homemade bread next to a slice of Wonderbread(tm)? Or homebrew next to a Bud? Or one of French Toast Girl's artprints next to the mass-produced "art" available at your local Walmart?

Q.E.D.

As Chesterton explained, distributism doesn't mean we should all be chicken farmers... just that most of us should have a few chickens. We don't all need to be artists, brewers or bakers, but we should each occasionally do some painting, brewing and baking. And yes, that means for every wonderfully talented French Toast Girl, there will be dozens of moderately talented artists like myself trying to put color on paper. So be it.

With all this production, some of us will undoubtedly do it badly. But even when we do it badly, we will have done it - and there's something beautiful about that.

On movies...

The earlier post about Click got me thinking about movies some more, and I realized something: Generally speaking, I don't take movies seriously enough to dislike them.

I think this is a specific application of my dad's equation S=R/E (satisfaction equals reality over expectations). When you take something seriously, your expectations tend to rise, and if the reality of the experience isn't sufficently high, satisfaction drops. But if you don't take the film too seriously, you're more apt to enjoy it...

I think it's also a specific application of my preference for imperfectionism.

Editing RPL Year 1

This is a little embarrasing (but not really). I was flipping through a copy of RPL Year 1 the other day, and discovered a dozen or so editorial flaws. Nothing huge - just stuff like a missing tab here and there, a missing blank line between paragraphs... that sort of thing. Like I said, nothing huge, but enough of them to be irritating.

So I just fixed as many as I could find, and sent the updated file along to Lulu. Anyone who buys it from here on out will get the corrected version. Unfortunately, I just sold a handful of copies at the AMI workshop, so they all got the version with the flaws (sorry, guys!). I'm sure they'll all be collectors items in the future, like that upside-down airplane stamp. Yeah, right.

Anyway, the one saving grace in all of this (aside from the book's future value) is that one of the first articles in the book is the one about Imperfectionism, where I explain that I am content to create things with flaws. Whew - got myself off the hook there, right? And of course, this is one more reason I love publishing at Lulu - the ability to correct flaws (large or small) quickly, easily and immediately.