I had a longer post which our network seems to have eaten, so let's see if I can boil it down to two salient points:
"Perfect." The agent keeps using that word. I don't think it means what she thinks it means. Used as written, it sets the bar so high that no-one will ever reach it.
That's said, she's not just wrong about perfection vs. "of high enough quality" (my rephrase) with respect to writing fiction. It's equally wrong about non-fiction, manuals, programming, systems design, engineering, and cake baking. In all those cases, I strive for one of two criteria. If I'm trying to make that critical first sale, it's "is it good enough to exceed the customer's expectations?" If it's an established relationship with the customer, it's "is it good enough to meet the customer's expectations?" (An aside: in an ideal world, the two would be identical. In the real world, they're not.) And yes, I do or have done all the above professionally except for cake baking. In that particular case, I only had to make children and adults happy. This may or may not be a higher bar, but I got no complaints.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2009-07-22 09:38 pm (UTC)"Perfect." The agent keeps using that word. I don't think it means what she thinks it means. Used as written, it sets the bar so high that no-one will ever reach it.
That's said, she's not just wrong about perfection vs. "of high enough quality" (my rephrase) with respect to writing fiction. It's equally wrong about non-fiction, manuals, programming, systems design, engineering, and cake baking. In all those cases, I strive for one of two criteria. If I'm trying to make that critical first sale, it's "is it good enough to exceed the customer's expectations?" If it's an established relationship with the customer, it's "is it good enough to meet the customer's expectations?" (An aside: in an ideal world, the two would be identical. In the real world, they're not.) And yes, I do or have done all the above professionally except for cake baking. In that particular case, I only had to make children and adults happy. This may or may not be a higher bar, but I got no complaints.