As you begin to make progress toward your writing goals, you will run into some roadblocks. Life will get messy, you will feel tired, and sometimes you will probably feel like giving up.

But why do you feel like giving up? It all comes down to unrealistic expectations. We get discouraged when the picture we have in our head doesn’t match the reality in front of us. We see the messiness in front of us and assume that the great books we love, or any great works of art for that matter, are perfect by comparison.

But that’s not the case. Take the classic 1972 movie The Godfather, for example. There is a scene in the last half of the movie where Sonny Corleone, played by James Caan, hunts down his brother-in-law Carlo because he beat up his wife Connie. Connie is Sonny’s sister, and Sonny is not only protective of Connie, but he’s also a hothead.

Sonny finds Carlo hanging out in the neighborhood street, and they get into a fight. He has Carlo up against a wall and starts punching him. However, because of the camera angle, you can clearly see that James Caan is not really hitting the actor playing Carlo. And of course, that’s what you’d expect since this is a movie. But it’s a flaw so obvious that it makes the fight a little bit comical.

However, that doesn’t detract from The Godfather’s greatness. In fact, it makes the film more endearing because it’s a work of art made by humans who were on a tight budget and a tight production schedule.

Every great work of art has flaws and mistakes. Does this mean we shouldn’t strive for excellence? Of course not. We should do everything we can to make sure our writing flows well and that we are using proper grammar, punctuation, and so forth.

But after we have done these things, there comes a point where we can no longer improve it. We have to release it to the world and move on to the next thing.

As Scott Adams, the creator of the comic strip Dilbert, said, “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” Don’t get hung up on the myth of perfectionism. You’ll never be perfect and there’s no such thing as perfect writing. But that is exactly what makes your writing so perfectly human.