The slightly off-key note, the crooked line: that’s where people can tell a person made it.

Small deviations are how a listener or a viewer knows a person was there. Perfectly even output could have come from anywhere, but a line that wavers exactly the way a hand wavers carries the fact of a body making it. Those details are read as presence, even by people who could not explain what they noticed.

When you review your work, sort the flaws into the ones that get in the way and the ones that are simply yours. Fix the first kind. Leave the second, and over time you will find that what you once wanted to correct is what people recognize you by.