Voltaire might have been the one to say it in this form, but the idea of “good enough beats unattainable ideal” has been around much longer. In fact, it warrants its own Wikipedia entry, if you’re curious to trace its history.
However it’s expressed, it’s good advice for a writer. But is it
perfect? (See what I did there?) I’ve often said, “remember, perfect is
the enemy of good,” to people stuck in the trap of perfectionism, but over
time I’ve come to question the effectiveness of simply saying the words.
If you’re working on a solo project with no genuine deadline, more can be done to improve it. And even more. There is always a better solution to even the smallest creative problem in any work, whether or not you can find it in a reasonable amount of time. That simple fact can be paralyzing. In fact, I’d argue that while writers might not actually get “blocked”—nothing is truly in the way of getting words down—they can definitely be paralyzed by perfectionism.
While I’m skeptical of the value of the adage—it’s never gotten me
out of any ruts—I do find demonstrations of the
good-enough philosophy motivating. They get me going when nothing else can.
Seeing good-enough in action, it becomes just a little bit easier to inject a
little pragmatism into your own work.
I’ve written before about my love of the competitive forging reality show Forged in Fire and this is a part of it. When a smith accidentally snaps his blade in half with thirty minutes left on the clock, it’s inspiring to see a feat that took over two hours the first time somehow repeat itself in a quarter of the time with comparable results. A few minutes of an episode of Forged in Fire is often the kick in the pants I need to push through and finish instead of finesse.
Another place I turn to for good-enough inspiration is the YouTube series Pitch Meeting. In it, writer/actor/comedian Ryan George portrays both a sociopathic studio executive and the manically productive screenwriter tasked with pitching him on his latest project. (He’s the writer behind all the big movies.) As the screenwriter explains what happens in the film, the exec can’t help but point out all the things that don’t make any sense, or that might annoy viewers, or that might be downright offensive. “Whoopsie!” the screenwriter cheerfully replies. “Whoopsie!” The exec repeats. And on they go to the next plot point. After all, they’ve got a movie to make.
For over two years, George-the-screenwriter has pitched George-the-exec on dozens, if not hundreds, of movies.
The beauty of the Pitch Meeting concept is that it forces you, the viewer, to grapple with the fact that a real writer and a real exec—at minimum—had to force their way through all the inconsistencies and logical fallacies inherent in a screenplay in order to get it made. It goes without saying that they solved many more than they ignored, but at a certain point, the originators had to say “whoopsie!” and leave it at that.
Click here to read the rest of David’s “Whoopsie” essay.
I am delighted to recently “meet” today’s guest blogger, David Moldawer, through a friend’s recommendation of his newsletter, The Maven Game.
“going through the goop” by David Moldawer
Just hold that happy thought, Peter!
—Tinker Bell, Hook
I’d always imagined a pupa as something straight out of the original Transformers cartoon, the caterpillar sealing itself up in its chrysalis only to [transform] into a beautiful butterfly. Turns out, no. The caterpillar actually digests itself, squirting enzymes throughout its own body to dissolve all its tissues. This goop is then assembled into a new insect. Thus the caterpillar doesn’t transform; it transcends. Only through this sacrifice can the butterfly take shape.
I’ve come to learn that I need order in my
life in order to function. Absolutely require it, in fact. Yet to write
anything worthwhile, I must pass through one or more stages of disorder—of
goop—with my ideas jumbling together and coming apart and turning inside-out in
extraordinarily uncomfortable ways. I think this is why messy thinkers are so
creative and prolific. They’re comfortable working with goop. Not me. I hate
it. But when I refuse to acknowledge the necessity of the goop stage, I become
inescapably blocked.
I say this as much to myself as I do to
you: There is no creative work without a goop stage. Likewise,
no creative career. You, too, must become goop in order to fly, not just once
but over and over again throughout your working life.
Or you could just stop creating altogether. I
still think about law school now and then. I really don’t like goop and I don’t
think I ever will.
More than a decade ago, The Girl with
the Dragon Tattoo was published and became an international
phenomenon. To date, nearly 100 million copies of the book and its sequels have
been sold worldwide. Dragon Tattoo wasn’t to my taste, but I
still found myself admiring the author, Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson. The
guy had vision.
Larsson embarked on writing his Millennium
“trilogy” (he actually had a ten-book series in mind) with absolute confidence
in its eventual success. His professional experience had been entirely rooted
in journalism—he’d written some short stories as a teenager—but he told friends
he was certain the books he was writing would not only find an
audience but make him rich to boot. Were it not for his sudden, if not
shocking, heart attack at fifty—according to Wikipedia, “his diet largely
consisted of cigarettes, processed food and copious amounts of coffee”—Larsson
would have far exceeded his ambitious goals.
Though he may not have used the Swedish
version of the term, Larsson had decided to write potboilers. In “the
old-fashioned days,” as my daughter likes to call the past, authors were
sometimes forced to lower themselves to writing books with commercial
potential. This kind of book was called a potboiler because it was intended to
“boil one’s pot,” i.e. pay the author’s daily living expenses so they could
write “real” books, i.e. the artsy kind most people don’t want to read.
Isn’t that funny? Can you imagine knowing how
to sit down and write a book guaranteed to make a lot of money and doing so
only under duress? Today, nobody knows how to do that!
Here’s the thing about Larsson: He’d nearly
completed the third book before he found a willing publisher for the first
one. That’s confidence. That is exactly the kind of long-term
thinking I advocated in last week’s essay. Larsson could have stopped working
on the series after finishing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,
investing all his energy into finding a publisher or simply waiting for
approval to come to him, as so many would-be authors tend to do. Instead, he
kept working, kept executing on his plan. More goop. He knew, or allowed
himself to feel, that success was inevitable. As a result, he felt no need to
spare himself any effort. He had no fear of that universally dreaded fate:
working on a project that doesn’t end up succeeding in the end. (Isn’t that the
real terror lurking in every blocked writer? “Wasted effort”?)
In retrospect, of course, Larsson’s second and
third book would never have been written had he waited, but even if he’d had
many years ahead of him, putting his project on hold because of any external
circumstance would likely have sapped the precious motive energy at the heart
of it, the kernel driving the books in his own mind.
Ideas just don’t age well, people. When have
you ever looked back at a scribbled note from more than a few months ago and
thought, “Hey, I can use this. Glad I held onto it.” More often than not, it’s
“I can’t believe I thought that way back in May. How embarrassing. I’ll have to
eat this paper to hide the evidence.” Use it or lose it.
Meanwhile, creative seeds grow to all sizes.
One idea is just a pyrite nugget; another is a vein of gold so deep it threads
the roots of the earth. Antiheroine Lisbeth Salander runs deep enough that
another Swedish journalist, David Lagercrantz, is continuing the series
himself with the permission of Larsson’s estate.
Think of how many ideas of similar potential
never achieved their true scope because their creators didn’t have a signed
contract from the Universe promising them life everlasting to complete their
work under perfect conditions and blockbuster success at the end of the road.
Think of how many great works only exist because their creators held onto their
confidence in the face of universal rejection or, worse, apathy.
Personally, I never feel all that certain I’m
even going to finish what I start. The idea of beginning a project with full
confidence in its eventual success feels crazy to me. And yet, we have two
children.
Unlike, say, science or economics, writing
seems to benefit from a kind of absolute self-confidence that simply has to be
decided, worn like a mantle. Yes, I will finish this. Yes,
it will turn out as well as I imagine, no matter how gruesome it appears along
the way. Come what may, I’m going through the goop.
Your work will suck until it doesn’t. Always. To quote multiple characters in Mission: Impossible—Fallout, “That’s the job.” There’s nothing pretty going on inside a chrysalis, either. You don’t judge the butterfly by its goop. All you can ever really do is decide to have full confidence in your ability to wrest order from chaos. As Tinker Bell tells Peter Pan, the trick is to hold onto that happy thought. Otherwise, you’re going to eat dirt.
About David Moldawer
David spent over a decade as a book editor at a slew of New York publishing houses including St. Martin’s Press, McGraw-Hill, and Penguin’s prestigious Portfolio business imprint, acquiring and editing bestselling nonfiction in the areas of business, technology, health, and memoir.
Today, he is an independent writer, editor, and creator of the Maven Game, a newsletter for experts, authors, publishers, and agents on making ideas and knowledge public—writing, speaking, sharing—without hating yourself in the morning. Sign up here for a new issue of the Maven Game every few weeks.
