Producing a Flawed Product

One of my favorite reads the past month has been Jane In Progress, the blog of Jane Espenson. Among other claims to fame she has a degree of connection to Joss and the Buffyverse. I mourn the lack of great writing on TV the last few seasons; in self-preservation I think I have searched out some of my favorite script writers, hoping to see where they are now and what I can look forward to from them. Sadly for me many of them have moved away from TV production to the big screen.

Did that first paragraph ramble on or what?

My point, yes I had one, was that Jane wrote over the weekend one of those Great Truths. Not just a writing truth, but one that you can take to many situations and know it as Truth. She wrote, "...our ability to detect flaws is far stronger than our ability to avoid producing flawed product." It's easier to go to a restaurant and say the meal was terrible than to stay home and cook it ourselves. Easier to criticize the politicians making choices than to do the work to find ones that make choices we support. And yes, easier to find flaws in the books and TV shows we see than to write better ones ourselves.

But don't let that stop you from trying. Better to produce a flawed product, than none at all.

Off to work on my own flaws. Happy Tuesday!