A writer/artist friend of mine recently sent an article written by a psychologist who was browbeating friends, patients, and all people who were perfectionists. Her take (as I read it) was basically that perfectionists all suffered from mental illness and were not fun to be around.

Apart from the somewhat odd tact of criticizing patients to the public, both my friend and I were struck by the rather odd notion presented by the doctor that doing things so they were just “good enough” was, well, good enough. It seemed such an antithesis to what we do as writers or book illustrators. The book publishing industry is, after all, based on the notion that ideally zero errors go to print (though, of course, a few do always sneak through).

Show me a good editor, writer, or artist and I’ll show you a perfectionist.

My friend also noted that there were punctuation errors in the text the good doctor had written.

Nitpicking?

Perhaps.

Yet I doubt that someone reading her article in a medical journal would think spotting errors was a matter of nitpicking. Discovered typos tend to mark a writer as less than authoritative. In a publication, they suggest not only poor editing, but hint at poor editorial practice, perhaps a lack of fact checking, verification of stories, and so forth. Profesionalism in the print industry extends right to the period on a sentence.

And perfectionism in such cases are seen by most people as the sign of authority and professionalism.

The article reminded me of when I taught school. Often after I had corrected papers with poorly worded sentences and handed them back to the students, a pupil would protest, “But anyone reading what I wrote would understand what I meant. Why should I have to spell every word correctly?”

True. But they might also just as easily misunderstand what was meant. Precision is necessary for accurate communication. Even if a reader can make out meaning in the fog of mistakes, people still judge the creation (as well as the creator) by how well something  is crafted. A poet who gets his meter right will always be perceived as more skilled than the one who is haphazard about technique.

That applies to all acts of creation. Slopped up just doesn’t cut it for most people looking at a work of art or writing. (And this may be why many people dislike modern art: It often appears that the artist was less than diligent about perfecting his style and the execution of the work. It looks slopped up. Like the artist said, “Good enough” and quit. And much of the audience viewing it dismisses it as less than worthy.)

The bottom line is that while eventually any work of art has to be finished, in the arts it is the perfectionists who produces the really good art, music, and writing. Recordings aren’t cut and sold to the public with sour notes in performances; more than just a quick spell check is done before a book goes to print.

The perfectionist trying to create a flawless performance or presentation is what makes these bits of creation worthy of purchase. The perfection of the work causes us to give them merit. Our enjoyment comes about not just because of the creativity of the artist, but also because of the perfection of his work.

Of course a person can go overboard with perfectionism, and undoubtedly that is the type of behavior a psychologist is most like to see in the office. People paralyzed by perfectionism aren’t behavioral models we all want to emulate.

Those who suffer from such “hyper-perfectionism” can become paralyzed artistically. Writer’s block happens in part because of the fear of imperfection; it’s easier to avoid taking a chance than it is to fail, to produce something that is flawed and less than worthy. And a large part of that feeling of failure comes when what you produce is less than perfect. Vicious cycle.

Likewise, there comes a time when the work of art must be released. As Leonardo de Vinci noted, a painting is never finished. There really are all sorts of things that can be improved no matter how often the artist has gone back to perfect things. The artist who spends his life trying to perfect one painting is in dire trouble, and if this is the behavior the doctor was criticizing, then she was on the mark (but might have, as I noted to my students, explained things a bit better for those who might not follow her less than precise wording).

The trick with art then (and especially with book illustrations where the artist faces an imposed deadline) is being able to split the difference between good enough and perfection. That isn’t an easy point to find, and hopefully time will permit the artist to be nearer perfection than to good enough.

But it can be a struggle.

Now that I have this off my chest, I’ll return to the book illustration I’ve been working on now for the last thirty years. In the meantime, feel free to explore my finished book artwork, CD album artwork, and magazine illustrations.