The following quote from Cheryl Strayed came to me via the amazing Subtle Maneuvers newsletter, where the author Mason Currey got it from Kara Cutruzzula and her Brass Ring Daily newsletter.
So this quote has been passed around a little. But if you’re a creative trying to finish a big project, this might be just for you:
Your ambition is not to write the Great American Novel. Your ambition is to finish the damn book. This is a lesson I’ve had to learn over and over again. It’s true of so many things in our lives. Because we’re afraid of failing, sometimes we turn away from it and don’t do it at all. As much as it would have hurt to write a book that everyone hated, the only thing that would have been a failure was me going years and years and years and always continuing to say, Yes, I’m working on my first book.
I had to surrender to my own mediocrity. I’m going to write as well as I can. The measuring stick is not, Do other people love it? Did it win the National Book Award? But rather, Did I do the work? And, Did I do it as well as I could? Answering yes to those two things is my guiding light. That’s what I go back to all the time. We are in charge of the work we do and whether or not we give it our all.
I don’t know how much I can add to this, except perhaps to share how Lisa and I think about finishing creative projects in our home and studios.
We think of surrendering to our own mediocrity, to use Ms. Strayed’s terminology, as writing a “C” paper. This is from my days in school, and I shared it with Lisa to help her get through her graduate classes that required a lot of writing every week.
If I focus on trying to write an “A” paper, I usually get bogged down in perfectionism. By trying to write only a “C” paper, I am more focused on getting it done.
This is akin to what Elizabeth Gilbert calls being a “disciplined half-ass.”
One can always edit the C paper up to A+ Quality, but it’s awfully hard to pull off an A paper at first swipe.
Another related thought is Julia Cameron’s idea that we take care of the quantity, leaving the quality up to God.
So write that C paper. Get the work done, and THEN polish it up.
My very best,
Philip
Also makes me think of AnneLamotts amazing essay, Shitty First Drafts.