Somewhere, out there in the collective imagination, there’s said to be a creature known as the perfect writer.
They wake early, of course.
They glide downstairs to their desk (spotless, naturally) and open their laptop to a symphony of inspiration. Words flow like champagne.
Every sentence glitters.
They sip coffee, smile modestly, and occasionally gaze out of the window in a state of creative bliss before returning to their manuscript, which will, without doubt, win awards, sell millions, and make people weep in public places.
Lovely idea, isn’t it?
Shame it’s complete nonsense.
The perfect writer doesn’t exist.
Never has, never will. The only people who talk about ‘perfect writing’ are usually those who haven’t done much of it.
Because anyone who’s spent more than ten minutes trying to make words behave knows that writing is not an elegant process.
It’s brutal.
Chaotic.
Often hilarious.
It’s staring at a blinking cursor while wondering if you’ve lost the ability to form sentences.
It’s deleting half a page because it ‘…doesn’t sound right’, and then realising you’ve rewritten it to sound exactly the same.
It’s discovering that your main character has changed hair colour, job, and possibly species between chapters and you can’t quite remember why.
Writers, real ones, are not paragons of discipline and clarity.
They are human beings trying to wrestle something meaningful from the fog of thought. Sometimes that happens in bursts of brilliance. Sometimes it happens at 2am, with toast crumbs on the keyboard and a face full of despair.
And yet, this myth persists, of writers as serene masters of their craft, producing gold on demand.
It’s comforting, in a way. It allows us to believe that writing should feel easy, and if it doesn’t, then perhaps we’re not cut out for it. But here’s the truth: writing that matters almost never feels easy. The struggle is the process.
Ask any accomplished author. They’ll tell you about the drafts that went nowhere, the ideas that withered, the days when they felt fraudulent. Every beautiful sentence was built on top of a pile of discarded ones. Every finished book is a monument to persistence, not perfection.
The blank page doesn’t discriminate. It intimidates everyone equally. And yet, that’s also what makes writing such a democratic art.
You don’t need to be perfect.
You just need to keep turning up.
The myth of the perfect writer serves only one purpose , to make the rest of us feel inadequate. So, let’s abandon it. Let’s celebrate the imperfect ones: the writers who doubt, stumble, revise, and come back anyway. The ones who mutter, ‘This is dreadful’, and then keep typing.
The ones who know that every story worth telling comes with blood, sweat, and a bit of biscuit dust in the margins.
Perfection is for machines.
Writing is for people.
And here’s a small secret: that messiness, that glorious imperfection, is where the real art lives. It’s what gives writing its texture, its humanity, its truth.
Because nobody connects with flawless.
We connect with honest.
So, if you’re sitting there worrying that your latest draft isn’t good enough — congratulations. You’re already a writer.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve just reread this and spotted at least three things I want to change...
…no, I think I’ll leave them in.
It feels more authentic that way.
(At Couzens-Lake Media, we’ve yet to meet a perfect” writer — and we’re rather glad about that.)
