Is Your Writing 'Good' Enough?

Maybe we need a different question

Here’s your quick access to the archive of Creative Nonfiction lessons—from writing OpEds to structuring personal essays to pitching your work to editors.

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Lori Gottlieb stirred up more than a little controversy when she subtitled her book “The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough.”

Relationships are one thing, but settling in your writing can stir controversy, too.

Inner controversy mostly. If you’ve ever found yourself searching for the elusive ‘Perfection’ in your writing, you’ll know what I mean.

But “Is my writing good enough?” is a terrible question. We really need to ask another one…

Woman with question mark on forehead. By Voyagerix on Adobe Stock Images

Trying to create perfect writing drains your confidence

I have to admit, I cried over my imperfect writing the other day. I’m attempting to edit a romance novel and my perfectionism kicked in.

“What if it’s just bad writing?” I complained to my 19-year-old daughter who is also a writer. “What if they all hate it?”

Her answer?

“You’re setting a really bad example for me right now, mum. If you can’t be confident with your writing, how am I meant to be?”

Kids are a great reality check.

I pulled on my big-girl pants, stopped feeling sorry for myself, and edited another chapter.

Us writers are notoriously unconfident in our abilities. We’re like nervous daters, always worried our kissing skills aren’t quite up to scratch.

Far too many of us are perfectionist and our own biggest critics. We want to be masters-of-writing and we know we fall short. I know I fall short, even after almost two decades doing this job.

But writing (like kissing, I guess) is something you NEVER master. Not really.

Yes — you could be better.
Yes — someone else is better.
Yes — you could write more often, more beautifully, more clearly, more expressively, more, more, more….

But thinking like that doesn’t encourage us to do better.

It’s DE-motivating.

If you want to get motivated with writing, you’ve got to do one thing:

Lower your standards with Mr. Good Enough.

I don’t mean publish low-standard work. You don’t commit to the first guy/girl you find in the pub. Well, sometimes you do, but…

How about instead, get fun and flirty with a bad draft? Get nose-to-nose with what my writer friend Sandi Parsons calls DIRTY DRAFTS.

A dirty draft is a first draft that needs a ton of cleaning up later on. Time for some literary mud-wrestling. You can pull out the editing mop later.

Perfectionism and comparison steal our confidence and motivation.

They make us procrastinate.

Freeze us up.

Send us spiraling into self doubt and editing that same piece of writing over and over, never publishing anything.

A better approach may be to let go and enjoy the process of writing. You can be serious about your writing and still have fun with it.

A trick to get writing

I’ll let you in on a conversation I have with myself almost every time I sit down to write:

“I’m going to write one sentence in this draft before I go on social media.”

“Well, now that’s done and I’m here typing, I guess I could write one more. It’s not that hard, after all, to write a sentence. I don’t have to publish this. No-one’s making me.”

“If I write for a few minutes and it’s complete garbage, so what? I’ve wasted such a small portion of my day. I could waste the same amount of time — if not more — browsing Instagram or replying to people on Substack.”

“And if I write today, then at least I’ve written something. You never know, maybe some of it, one line perhaps, might be usable?”

One of the biggest hurdles we face as writers is getting that first word on the page.

Blank pages suck!

They torment us. They scream in their white silence, “You will never write anything ever again, and if you do, it will be terrible!”

That’s our challenge as writers. Our first challenge, at least. Get something, anything, on that blank page.

Breaking-the-page-in is the hardest and most important thing you can do.

But Kelly! I can’t seem to write anything! I’ve got writer’s block.

I hear you and I’m going to tell you what a writing coach told me early on in my career during a 10-minute writing session:

Just keep your hand moving, even if you write: “blah, blah, this is awful and I don’t know what to write.” Just keep going. Eventually, something will come.

Begets is a great word

Writing begets writing. Just like sleep begets sleep. When you get enough of it, more comes. It brings about more of itself. It’s a habit.

When you write 250 words, 250 more pop into your head. That’s how I accidentally wrote 1000-4000 or more words a day during November a couple of years ago and ended up finishing a 50K word novel.

You need to unstop that stopper in your mind and let the words trickle out, even if it’s slow and rusty-looking at the start.

So, I challenge you to an 8-minute writing task.

I never do writing tasks or prompts people give me online. I’m so lazy. Most of us are. But I dare you to do this one. Double dare you.

Give it 8 minutes of your time.

‘Is my writing good enough’ is a terrible question, so here are two better ones:

• What have you got to lose if you don’t achieve your writing goals?

• What have you got to lose if you do?

These questions reveal your fears. Let me know in the comments what you discover.

Now set a timer. Open a blank page or grab a pen. On your mark. Get set. Go!

Other things to try:

• Free writing first thing every morning. Don’t worry about whether it’s “good” or not.

• Writing in a different genre than you usually do. Try a lyric essay, a short story, or research a topic you’ve never written about before.

• Using a free template from me and see what it inspires.

See the archive here of CNF lessons—from writing OpEds to structuring personal essays to pitching your work to editors. There’s a lot in there!