Irvine Valley College

Online Creative Writing Workshop

Writing 10 - Introduction to Creative Writing

Spring 2012 - Ticket # 64580 // Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink, MFA, Instructor

Weekly Exercises

Week 2 - Character Sketches

I can see it even now - we are doing a silly "rope board" for the Girl Scouts.  It's late and we are working in the garage - very hot summer night.  I am folding the sandpaper  yet again to smooth the corners of the board.  I think:  Hardly anyone will notice our little rope display among all the projects at the Girl Scout Father-Daughter Fair.  And I am tired of sanding.  I'm eager, at least, to get to the part where we attach the ropes - ropes which will illustrate a "half hitch" and a "square knot" and a "slip knot."  

My father says:  "Anything that's worth doing is worth doing well."

It is the refrain of the perfectionist.  

My father is dead these ten years now - but his words come back to me daily.  "Half measures are worthless."  "Make it right."  For him, the prospect of doing another day perfectly was always a source of joy.  He would get up in the morning, singing on the way to the bathroom for the perfect shave - "Get up, get up, get out of bed....Gabriel will warn you from early morn you can hear his call....When you're down and out hold up your head and shout, it's going to be a great day."  After his shower, he had whole-grain cereal, whole milk, honey, and one-half cup of coffee.  Then, he returned to the bathroom to brush his teeth with baking soda.  He would dress in a perfect suit - even though he was an engineer, and his co-workers wore sport coats and shirts with plastic pen holders in the pockets.  He buffed his shoes every morning before he put them on.  With the first light of the sun, off he would drive in his clean Chevrolet to the factory.  He worked for the same company, building airplanes,  for forty-three years.  I believe he tried to make every day perfect.

I am not here to tell you that living with a perfectionist is a fine thing.  It is hard to live with someone who always has the high ground.  No matter what you do, it isn't ever just right.  But there is something concrete and satisfactory about the memory of perfectionism.  You can, long after, take pleasure in the tightly-coiled garden hose, in the well-defined heel of a shoe, in the knot in a scarf around your neck, in the feel of a smooth piece of wood.  The world, as it turns out, resists perfection at every turn - knots slip, suits gets spots, people die.  

The echo remains - all that we have of a difficult truth - "Suit up, show up, do your best," he would say, straighten his tie, stride out the door.  

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