I'm Good Enough... I'm Smart Enough...and Doggone It...

I’m now in Week 4 of the six weeks that I've got scheduled for writing. I wrote last week about how I used the corkboard and post-its to outline the overall 4-volume story. The corkboard method really served its purpose well, and once I was happy with where it’s at, the next step was to open up Google Docs and get started on a much more detailed, scene-by-scene outline for Book 1.

I also mentioned last week a recommendation for writing tactics and inspiration, Stephen King’s book On Writing. While I found much of it to be very helpful in setting a strong mindset for creating, one aspect that I differ with King is that of plotting. King writes about how he hates to plot, hates to know how the book will progress, or even end. He prefers to just stick his characters in a situation and let them “show” him how they deal with it. It's probably a very fun way to write.

I understand how this loose form of writing could be valuable to writers who tend to rely on plotting or outlining too much, and end up with a rigid or lifeless story, but that’s a risk I’ll need to take, because I feel that I NEED to create an outline to properly plot my story. What’s more, it’s turned out to be really helpful to work out the story beats, the flow, the arc, all that good stuff. I guess that’s what it’s intended to do! :)

I found that as I fleshed out the outline, that it really required me to figure out so many little aspects of the story. How can this happen there, if that hasn't happened there, and how will this affect this and that, and wow, I need to write another this so that can take place. It was really illuminating and a lot of fun, and I'm happy to say that the story is really taking shape.

Stephen King also writes in his book how -- and I’m paraphrasing here-- though it’s NOT possible to go from being a bad writer to a good writer, and it’s NOT possible to go from being a good writer to a GREAT writer (the Shakespeares, etc.), it IS possible to go from being an adequate writer to a really good writer. That’s good enough for me to try. I think I’m probably an adequate writer now. But I think, through lots of practice and passion, I could be really good (or at least, the project could be really good). Sounds good to me. OK, maybe I should work on my vocabulary.

I haven't written in ages and have never written a story that will actually be published. I have no idea how it'll turn out, and it's a little dauting, but I'll just have to trust that it'll be good enough to be worth doing. It doesn't have to be “great”, just “kinda good”. Kinda good is enough. It doesn't have to be perfect. Google tells me that it was Voltaire that said “Perfection is the Enemy of the Good.” I’ve recently read a slightly different version, one that said that "Perfection is the enemy of the Possible". So, I'm not focusing on, or striving for, perfection- just “Possible”. Possible = Kinda Good = Good Enough.