Writing

Can it ever be perfect? Can I make a sentence/paragraph/page turn in such a way as to allow me the writer to feel that sense of wonder - did I do that? - a wonder which is not to be marred later by a re-reading and the oft-inevitable realization that something could have been improved.

Unlike the ephemeral arts - music, cooking - writing lingers, lurking, to shame us into that embarrassed realization that what at first blush seemed wonderful - nay marvelous - is in fact only mediocre or ordinary. That sentence that seemed so sharp and well crafted seems clunky and rough, an approximation of a thought rather than the crystallization of one.

Writing is a fierce mistress and an unforgiving one. So why write?