"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

I think one obstacle anyone creative has to overcome as a matter of course is that you are going to fuck it up and it won't turn out anything like you planned.
Because get this, Michealangelo, whilst being reputedly profoundly arrogant and dismissive of other esteemed artists of his time, was never satisfied with his own work.
Michelangelo, creator of mannerism, sculptor of David, painter of the Sistine Chapel roof and wall, contedor for renaissance man and arguably the greatest pure artist of all time.
Often turned around and looked at his own work and was like 'nah'.

The constant failure to translate concept into execution though has numerous benefits. An artist should understand more readily than others that concept counts for far less than execution.
Our society unfortunately has a bad habit of reinforcing big thinkers and not the superb doers so much. Execs involved in strategy are celebrated and given higher status often when the bottom line results haven't even come through yet.
An artist should be able to pick up how large the distance between conception and execution is at the distance it is smallest, from brain to arm to pencil to paper.

Finishing I think is the key skill of creativity, something I have learnt from The Real Gayle King. What started as 'ambition comes before achievement' has evolved into a deeper reflection on the value of releasing flawed finished works.

Which is surprising because of how clouded the whole process is by the talent of others. For example, I can write a short story and think: 'This dialogue is just dead, like it was carved out of wood.' but perhaps the others can't see it, because all they can see is the execution, not the conception and how dismally short of my knowledge of 'exactly who the characters are' the dialogue falls.

Then Harvard can do all the layout so the finished work looks far more polished and sophisticated than I could ever make it.

And still collectively, I know we all failed. We all could have made it better, in some way, pushed and pushed and revised and retried and tested and given feedback etc. But the zine itself is of little consequence, why bother? We just learn from our experience and move on.

The second aspect the concept of failing to realise a creative dream or vision is amongst the fans.

This was pointed out to me by watching a particularly painful segment of 'An Evening With Kevin Smith' where a group of guys from 'a comedy troup' dressed up as Jay and Silent Bob and reenacted a little scene then asked Kevin Smith if he wanted to come hang out with them after the show have a few beers.

To which Kevin responded the obvious 'God no. I go home and sleep.' and I don't know why but it exposed a gap in my knowledge, probably because having no fans like it, I haven't experienced it.

But see I always assumed that to be a fan of Kevin Smith, or my work, or Prince's work, you had to understand on a level at or near or approaching the level they created it on.

For example, I would imagine Kevin Smith fans to in general be roughly on the same cultured and intellectual plane that he is on, its just Kevin Smith is the guy that actually makes movies and made it in movies (and comics). Whereas if I were to see the Wayan's brothers doing Q & A I would expect them to be about as cultured and intelligent as their movies 'White Chicks' 'Little Man' and 'Scary Movie 3' are.

You get what I'm saying, but as it apparantly turns out, just as we could grab a set of magnets and then hop in a time machine and go back to the neolithic age and wow human beings with the miracle of magnets, and probably the ability to scratch ourselves with a stick, so too are movies like Clerks going to have appeal to people way way less intelligent than Kevin Smith.

Just to put that in perspective, the range of IQ is actually not that large. In Australia the average is apparantly 107, in the LA Lakers apparently it's like 94. But people of high profile are not actually in a whole stratosphere 30 km above the average man's heads. Kevin Smith is probably in the 130's or something, unlike Krudd who is apparantly in the mid 120's. IQ also doesn't really measure aptitude or expertise, social networks, street smarts etc that all contribute to success. That is to say, whilst Kevin Smith and I may have comparable IQ's I couldn't based on that turn up to a set of a movie and go 'okay shoot' because I don't know the second thing about film making, which is the thing that comes after the first thing about making movies 'you need a camera'.

But I imagine I could go to a Q & A with Kevin Smith and ask a question more likely to get answered than 'would you hang out with us and have a few beers' which smacks of all kinds of stupid.

The point being that there's no point to being a perfectionist. Sure you may not like the people that like your works, nor want to spend an evening after a lecture hanging out with them. You may condesendingly not even think them to be on your level.
But they enjoy it, they admire it, and presumably they could not create it for themselves, for whatever reason. Whether unlike me they couldn't imagine a better version, or like me they can't make any film let alone a better, worse, inferior, superior interpretation of it.
I directed a play once and I still have no idea how I did it. Megan did most of the work.

The second point about finishing stuf, even if it isn't successful is that you get feedback, interpretations that you were never exposed to before, you may even succeed where you thought yourself a failure. You will always think yourself a failure, but everyone will interpret your work differently to how you would. No matter how 'perfect' or 'imperfect' it is in your eyes, perfection is in the eye of the beholder.

Terry Pratchett parodied shakespear in one of the Discworld series of novels, I forget which, but his Shakespear grudgingly turned out his 'tired' tragedies and comedies all the while dreaming of writing 'The Three Stooges' and 'Laurel & Hardy' and 'Charly Chaplin'-esque slapstick humour.

This would be a slap in the face to most scholarly groupies of Shakespear, to suggest a form of humour as superficial and 'stupid' as slapstick might have been the ultimate but unrealised fantasy of Shakespear.

Sure there's no factual basis, but it illustrates the possibility for your fans to interpret your 'perfect' as 'distinctly flawed' and your 'distinctly flawed' as 'perfection'.

It's a conundrum. But both allow you to progress, I guess there's a danger of selling out, which I guess I would describe as 'disrespecting your fans' speaking down to them like they are an idiot, even if this ostensibly is what they want. Like if Kevin Smith and Damon Wayans were of comparable intelligence, and Wayans' still produced white chicks. I find that disrespectful, or for a more localised example if Rove McManus was actually funny or talented and still produced Rove for us, I would find that disrespectful and a sell-out.

So Beckett's advice is good, I had originally thought it to be China Mieville's but I would say follow it: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.