One day, the sand in your hourglass will run out. We have a limited amount of time on this earth. What will be left after you’re gone? Maybe some social media posts, mementos, people’s memories, and what you created. Those things can fade over time, but your words can be immortal.

We all have the same amount of time in life. Life is never going to be ideal, and things are not going to slow down. There is always going to be something happening. You write in the midst of an imperfect life, in the mess and the muck of what is happening all around you.

In the musical “Hamilton,” Eliza Hamilton asks her husband, “Why do you write like you’re running out of time?” The truth is that we’re all running out of time.

Question: Does knowing your life will come to an end someday motivate you to make the most of every day? Why or why not?

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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.

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