by Mary HickeyWhen is something we have written good enough that we need to mark it “Done” and move on to our next project? It makes sense that the longer we take, the better the end product is likely to be. That’s assuming we are actually working at perfecting what we’re doing, not just procrastinating and doing nothing, of course. If we hurry too much to get our work into print, we can end up like the sheep-reporters of Columbus’s hometown author James Thurber, in Fables for Our Time. In Thurber’s fable, several sheep race to be first to get a story out about life in Wolf-land. The winner writes about a single day-trip there, when it happened there was a festival going on. So that sheep wrote that Wolf-land wasn’t scary, just a fun place where they party all the time. Sheep who believed that ended up as dinner on other days in Wolf-land. Thurber’s sardonic moral for this story was, “Don’t get it right, just get it written.” That’s a good cautionary to keep in mind, but I think most of us tend toward the opposite extreme of excessive perfectionism. If what we have written doesn’t get published, we can be tempted to think it would have been, had we just spent more time on it. Possibly, but not necessarily true. Maybe we unknowingly sent a story about a cat to an editor who hates cats. Or, maybe ours wasn’t accepted because they just accepted a very similar article or story from someone who got theirs out the door faster than we did! At some point we have to cut our work short and say it’s done, or the end of our lives will come upon us with a drawer, attic or even an entire office full of writing that has never seen the light of day. Frequently controversial British columnist, blogger and author Peter Hitchens never seems to have any trouble getting his thoughts from his mind to his computer, and from there to his prolific blog. I think he hints at how he accomplishes this in an article where he criticizes, among other things, England’s obsession with high-speed rail. He notes that they could instead rebuild the infrastructure for adequate slower trains and trams, which would get people where they are going at far less expense. He says: “As in so many other fields of endeavor, if we recognize that we are not the best in the world, we might end up with something decent.” [Spellings changed from British to American standard] If our writing has reached the point where we feel it says what we wanted to say, clearly, effectively and with as skillful use of words and language as we are capable, it’s probably “something decent”. Whether we intend to send it out for publication, or just email it to our friends and family members and hope they read it, we need to take it out of the drawer and kick it out the door!
KATHY WOLFE
4/1/2023 10:28:41 am
GOOD JOB MARY.
Sandy Ferrell
4/1/2023 10:39:41 am
Great way to get us motivated! Procrastination is horrible. What are we afraid of?
Darlene
4/1/2023 01:05:34 pm
Loved this post! So well written and very true for most writers. 🤗
Doris
4/2/2023 06:58:32 pm
Mary, I couldn't agree with you more! Thank you. 👍 Comments are closed.
|
Archives
March 2024
Categories |