Let it Go

Releasing Imperfect Work into the World

There’s something I’ve been sitting with lately, and I suspect I’m not alone in it: the gnawing resistance to releasing our work.

We write, sculpt, design, compose. And then we read, re-read, refine, tweak, edit again. We tell ourselves we’re perfecting. But often, we’re protecting—ourselves, our reputations, our fragile belief that maybe this thing we've made could be enough if we just worked on it a little longer.

Right now, I have three books in final editing and beta reading. But I can’t yet bring myself to release them. And the truth is, I’m not sure when I’ll feel ready. There's always one more pass to make, one more sentence to smooth, one more detail to elevate.

It’s not really fear in the traditional sense. It’s the pursuit of perfection—noble on the surface, but insidious underneath. The longer we wait, the more we deprive others of what our work has to offer. And maybe that’s the real tragedy: not imperfection, but silence.

A while back, I saw a post by Ryan Stephens that struck me. He shared this idea (uncited, so take it as folklore if you must): Picasso created more than 50,000 works of art. Less than 1% are remembered today. Whether or not the statistic is exact, the point stands. Art is a numbers game. Not everything will be a masterpiece. Not everything needs to be.

We see the flaws. We know what we’d do differently if we had more time. But our audience rarely sees those same imperfections. They see the whole. They feel the story. They connect with the soul behind the work. They don't expect perfection. They expect authenticity.

We don’t create for the critics. We create for the ones who see, who need, who are changed by what we put into the world—even if they are few, even if they find us long after we’re gone.

And yes, that permanence can be terrifying. To know that once we release our creations, they’re out there—errors, missteps, brilliance and all. But that’s the nature of creative work. To hold back forever is to rob others of what might have met them exactly where they are.

So today, this is my reminder to myself—and to you:
Let go. Share your work.
It won’t ever be perfect. But it might be exactly what someone else needed.

Be bold. Release the work. And keep creating.