Remembering Good Enough

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

My latest book Think Agile, Write Better is in its final read-through, and I’ll be formatting it for e-book next week.  This book has been through many edits to get it right, but my biggest challenge lately was to realize that “it’s good enough.”

I’d gotten into an “editing binge” when one pre-reader found some flaws with first third of the book.  I went through the suggestions carefully, rewrote them again, kept going, and kept looking for what else to fix.  I knew there had to be more to do.

That’s when the same friend read it and said basically “ok, seems solid” which surprised me because I’d expected yet more to fix.  I’d gotten into a habit of editing and looking for flaws, not realizing if the book was “good enough.”

It’s easy to get into the zone where you edit, edit, and edit some more.  Looking for flaws leads you to find more flaws, and sometimes even imagine them or second guess yourself.  You can get to the mental place where your book will never be “good enough” because you can’t recognize it and aren’t even looking for it.

There I was, with what was basically a finished book and I didn’t even know it.

I think there’s a skill to recognizing a book is done, a skill with two facets.

The first facet of the skill is to recognize that a book is good enough on a technical and content level.  This mix of organization, intuition, empathy, and technical knowledge is one that a good author just develops over time.  I don’t think it’s one you can train in, more one you get to by just doing it.

The second facet of the skill is psychological –to be in the mental space to recognize that a work is complete.  Based on the experience of myself and fellow authors, this “skill facet” of being in the right mental space to say “done” is less common than the ability to see the work is done.  Many of us have met authors with it what is clearly a finished work that authors clearly can’t stop editing.

I can relate.  I still rethink past writing, but there is a time just to realize it’s good enough and move on.  If one doesn’t move on, one will never publish what they’re working on, let alone publish anything else.

I’m glad I caught that moment of being in the mental space of not seeing “good enough,” as it not only kept me moving but it was also a good reminder to move on.

I might not know what’s next, but at least I know there will be a next.  All because I could say “good enough.”

Steven Savage

40 Versions Of Me

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.comSteve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

(Thanks to Serdar for the idea.)

  1. There’s a me who became a comedian.
  2. There’s a me who became a minister and then lost his faith.
  3. There’s a me who became a minister and then lost his heart.
  4. There’s a me who became a tutor.
  5. There’s a me who churns out hack SF at a rapid pace.
  6. There’s a me who collects obscure sci-fi and fantasy movies.
  7. There’s a me who designed psychotronic devices.
  8. There’s a me who designs artificial limbs.
  9. There’s a me who did documentation for video games.
  10. There’s a me who didn’t live to see eighteen.
  11. There’s a me who does neurological research and hates it.
  12. There’s a me who joined a cult.
  13. There’s a me who founded a cult.
  14. There’s a me who got a Computer Science Degree and vanished into a government job.
  15. There’s a me who got deep into indie bands and ran their newsletters.
  16. There’s a me who has a nursing degree.
  17. There’s a me who has only worked in a University setting but isn’t an educator.
  18. There’s a me who helped a company dominate their industry, and I never realized what I did.
  19. There’s a me who is a crotchety old programmer.
  20. There’s a me who is a damn good Executive Admin.
  21. There’s a me who is a humor columnist since my college days.
  22. There’s a me who is a life coach.
  23. There’s a me who is a professional writer – of anything.
  24. There’s a me who is a social worker.
  25. There’s a me who is a therapist
  26. There’s a me who launched an anime fan magazine.
  27. There’s a me who manages video game programmers.
  28. There’s a me who programmed video games.
  29. There’s a me who still works in banking and likes it, for some reason
  30. There’s a me who supports expensive laboratory devices.
  31. There’s a me who was never married.
  32. There’s a me who works in the RPG industry.
  33. There’s a me who writes weird, surrealist fiction.
  34. There’s a me who wrote – and maybe still writes – indie comics.
  35. There’s a me who’s a dual citizen in Canada.
  36. There’s a me who’s a professor of some kind.
  37. There’s a me who just realized what he’s done with his life.
  38. There’s a me who likes himself more.
  39. There’s a me who likes myself less.
  40. There’s a me who never writes things like this list.

What are 40 versions of you I should know?

Steven Savage

Eyes Off The Prize

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Serdar and I have been making various posts about writing and focus.  He recently discussed the importance of writing systems – that they can be more important than goals.  I’d like to add that goals can get in your way.

The problem with goals is that they’re distractions from reaching them.

Big goals, elaborate plans, fantasies of success can occupy your mind so often you don’t actually put pen to paper or finger to keyboard.  It’s easy to spin off into what could be, what might be, and never get there.  Many a book is unwritten as people stop at the idea and don’t get to the making it real.

Future hopes can also lead to hopelessness.  You can feel you’ll never get there, that you’re not worthy, that you aren’t up to the task.  That keeps you from doing anything including, well, actually writing.

Finally, goals and hopes can lead you to planning, and documenting, and the like but never actually starting.  It’s easy to get lost in planning and outlines and charts and never do the work.  It might even be comforting.

Want to know what works?  Doing the actual task.  Dreams and plans do not do your writing.  Only writing does writing.  This is not to say you shouldn’t have big dreams and even bigger plans.  What you have to do is take time to forget them and do the job.

This is where writing practices and systems come into play.  Yes they may require you to set goals, but they also break down your work into deliverables you can actually do and then you do them.  If you write an hour a day, great, then you write no matter what.  If you have an elaborate outline of scenes you can write each scene without worrying about anything else.

The best way to reach your writing goals is to stop thinking about them.  Any good writing system, any good writing practice, will help you get time to forget why you’re writing so you can do your writing.

Steven Savage