There's a really good quote in a Paul Auster book I read recently but can't find now about how making art means always failing. I googled for it and found this quote instead, which doesn't say quite the same thing but I still like it:

I assumed that everything would lead to complete failure, but I decided that didn't matter – that would be my life.
-- Jasper Johns

It's interesting to think about art and failure and perfectionism. If the process of creating art is striving for an impossible ideal, constantly falling short, and thereby constantly failing, but creating the byproduct art, and if perfectionism is a paralyzing and somewhat delusional fear and abhorrence of failure, then wouldn't perfectionists who try to be an artists drive themselves slowly insane?

I think I'd be a better writer if I could just resign myself to failure, and then (because life is ironic like that) I wouldn't fail.