NOT QUITE GOOD ENOUGH

Writers are haunted by the feeling that they’re not quite good enough. As soon as you compose a single sentence, doubt sets in. Does it need that adjective (probably not). Should it be two sentences, not one; more rhythmic, more alliterative? Less alliterative?

Someone clever said the three secrets of writing are: editing, editing and editing. I have done that. Taken a 500 word essay and re-written the piece over and over and found that the last draft is only three words different from the original. You have to persevere through the doubts until those three words are in place. Or deleted. It is that feeling of being not quite good enough that drives you on and I marvel at the genius of Michelangelo sculpting for three years the five metre David from a marble block, day in day out without making a single typo.

Cyril Connolly, George Orwell’s biographer, wrote in his non-fiction ‘The Unquiet Grave’ a cautionary tale for writers unblessed with ‘the gift’ that they often fail to reach what potential they do have through a lack of commitment or motivation, from the hypnotic lure of distraction. Connolly on reading Orwell’s books set in Burma, Paris and Catalonia must have concluded that as a writer in troubled times – the rise of fascism in the 1930s – he was not quite good enough to add his voice to the struggle. It is far easier to clean the kitchen floor than sit down in front of the blank page. I doubt Connolly ever cleaned the kitchen floor, but he did write the chilling dictum: The enemy of art is the pram in the hall.

Aside from journalism, criticism, advertising, writing is not a profession, certainly not a well-paid one. Writers write for reasons not dissimilar to those of addicts who drink or take drugs. It is a habit they often want to quit but are compelled like Sisyphus to have one more push at the summit. They cling to the dream or delusion that once they cross the not quite good enough Rubicon, they will enter a sacred place where the words lay peacefully in reach like tiles that can be laid in a mosaic of perfect and meaningful prose. 

Ulysses Not Quite Good Enough

James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ was partially serialised in the American journal ‘The Little Review’ from March 1918 to December 1920. London publishers considered the work not quite good enough to be included in their lists and the manuscript finally found its way into a limited edition in Paris with financial support from friends and the American-born publisher Sylvia Beach. It rolled off the press on 2 February 1922, Joyce’s fortieth birthday, and is considered one of the greatest literary works of the 20^th century.

On my bookshelf there is a copy of ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’ by John Kennedy Toole. After receiving a string of polite rejections for his picaresque novel – the politeness makes it worse, depression seeped in and in 1969, at the age of 31, he committed suicide. Toole’s mother, Thelma, salvaged the carbon copy of the manuscript and spent eleven years contacting publishers before her son’s novel was finally accepted by Louisiana State University Press in 1980. It came out with a 2,500 initial print run, was an instant classic, earned Toole a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1981 and eventually sold more than 1.5 million copies.

Toole in ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’ set out to explain life’s vicissitudes and interpret the modern world from his unique point of view. Similarly, Joyce in ‘Ulysses’ addresses the changing attitudes towards tradition and family life in 1920’s Ireland. Both writers were looking into the future with feelings of uncertainty and gloom. Their works were rejected by the main stream media, not because they were not quite good enough, but because they identified quirks and transformations in society unnoticed by the editors in their glass windowed ivory towers.  

That sense of not being not quite good enough is also known as imposter syndrome, the persistent sense of paucity writers and artists suffer regardless of progress and attainment. The young writer with a successful first book fears there will never be another. Even the old master can’t help thinking his or her best work is behind them. Self-doubt is undermining, isolating and leads to feelings of fraudulence and failure. If there is an upside to these feelings of inadequacy: those who persevere do get better at what drives them.

Finally, from a list sent to me by ‘State Media’ editor Mike von Joel, three Japanese ‘Concepts for Life’ suitable for the unsure artist:

• Ikigai: Find what makes your life meaningful by doing what you love, what you’re good at, and what the world needs.
• Kaizen: Make small daily improvements.
• Oubaitori: Don’t compare yourself to others. Everyone has their own path and timing in life.

oOo

My new book ‘How to Rob the Bank of England’ is just out and available in hardback, digital and audible.

Review: “This is a real jaw-dropper. The scale of the theft, the global links of the gangs. The extraordinary figure of Keith Cheeseman. I had no idea – it’s just wonderful.” Peter York, author of ‘A Dead Cat On Your Table.’