Just how good is good enough

Battling perfectionism (and fear?) to finish my memoir

You’ve heard the mantras. Good enough. Done is better than perfect. I love them and I hate them. I love them because as a mom, professor, wife, daughter, colleague, friend…in all the roles I play in this life, I need reminders that I can’t do everything, please everyone, get it 100% right every time. Whether reviewing a manuscript for work, or coordinating STEM night for my kids’ school, the tasks need to get done. Here on Substack, I made a goal to write something once per week. It is a challenge, there is never enough time, and I struggle with what to write. But I write, edit as best I can within the time frame, and hit publish. It feels like an accomplishment every time. Done is better than perfect.

But I struggle with this approach when it comes to writing my memoir.

I looked back through my writing journal recently and I was shocked to see that I started seriously writing this book in 2019. I knew I’d been writing for that long, of course, but seeing the date on the journal page was startling. Five years!

I have made progress. I’ve spent two years working with my critique partners, exchanging pages and getting feedback. I’ve participated in workshops through Writer’s Digest, Catapult, Story Studio, and Aspen Words. I’ve taken classes from

Jane Friedman

,

Courtney Maum

, and about anything offered by

The Shit About Writing Team

. With a full time job and two kids and all the things in life—it’s not nothing to have spent four years learning, writing, revising, and editing this book.

But how do I know when it is good enough?

It is not there yet, this I know for sure. My critique partners are just now reading the last few chapters. I will need to tighten up the story after I finish this draft, polish sentences on a line level, make sure each character is fully developed and that the setting shines. It needs to be good enough to catch the interest of an agent, and one day make readers fall in love with it. Sometimes I wonder if my goal-oriented, type A personality (I am a scientist, after all) is hindering my ability to ultimately finish. I also think there is an intuitive aspect to knowing when the writing is good enough that is difficult for a first time author.

At some point when I’ve done the work and checked all the boxes, this memoir— this little piece of my soul—will be as good as I can make it and I will have to let it go.

But the truth is that I don’t want it to just be good enough. I want it to be amazing, fantastic, unforgettable! That is my battle at the moment—wanting it to be the best it can possibly be, but also finding the confidence to know when I’ve done enough.

Would love any input on how to make this judgment of a creative project you’ve worked on, seemingly forever. How do you balance objective analysis with intuition, and ultimately faith in your own process?