I got up this morning and turned on the TV in the living room. It was set to the History Channel and a documentary about Einstein's difficulties in proving his theory of gravity–all the mistakes he made and the several different equations he tried and discarded before returning to an original idea that he had dismissed earlier in the process. BAM!! Success. Work of genius.

There were commentaries from several scientist and mathematicians–one from that Japanese-American guy from the Science Channel, with the nearly white hair. I really love that guy's hair, for some reason… Anyway! He described genius as having the will-power to make the necessary mistakes in order to find the right answers–or something of the sort.

I couldn't help thinking of it in terms of my writing. Well, who am I kidding? I think of EVERYTHING in terms of writing. My point is, I'll never be satisfied with my book until all the bugs are worked out of it, and until they are, sending it out is only a waste of time and postage. I know what effect the story is supposed to have on readers, and at the moment it falls short. If I have to try everything under the sun to discover the true potential of this book, I will–even removing characters and changing a few plot elements. I can't let anyone pressure me into stopping because they think I've worked on it long enough. It's not finished until I say it's finished. Period. This is my life's work, and I don't give a rat's fuck about whether or not someone else is tired of me working on it. Imagine if Einstein had listened when his family said, "Albert, just start sending it out already! They probably won't notice the mistakes anyway. It's good enough." I don't want "good enough". I want perfection.

Maybe the human race can never achieve total perfection, but everything on earth has its own version of it. Physics, Math, Literature… I'm not ready to throw in the towel under the pretense that I'm sending it off to get published. I don't want to publish a bad novel–and screw you for trying to encourage me to in hopes of making money! I don't want money. I want to be a damn good writer. I want people to know I'm a damn good writer… and give me money for it. Ha-ha-ha!

Here we go. Draft #3. I dare anyone to complain.