As a reader, I suppose I have thought “This is perfect” about some novels and stories. I think it has to do with things like internal consistency, appropriate yet creative diction, harmony of style and subject. But because I’m a romantic (in the old-fashioned sense, as opposed to classicist), many of my personal favorite books are over-ambitious ones that have very obvious imperfections, like Stendhal’s The Red and the Black (huge tonal inconsistencies, structural issues, an ending that arguably doesn’t match the rest of the book) and Kafka’s The Castle (not even finished!). Many of the books I love don’t have the three-act structure that it’s been drummed into my head I have to have in my own books.
Nothing I’ve written is ever gonna seem “perfect” to me, but sometimes it feels like it’s been through the kiln and has hardened into a final shape that I can accept. That’s what I aim for—basically, sentences and paragraphs and chapters that make me keep reading rather than stopping to scratch my head and meditate on a smarter word choice. Something that flows. Something that turns me from a writer back into a reader.