Last week I wrote about how Cory Doctorow separates how he feels about his writing from the writing itself.
Annie Dillard would agree:
“Another luxury for an idle imagination is the writer’s own feeling about the work. There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer’s estimation of a work in progress and its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.” “The Writer’s Life”, page 15
That’s not to say you shouldn’t think about your work or have high expectations for it, however. In addition to writing phenomenal books, Annie Dillard also taught writing at Wesleyan University. One of her students writes about her mentorship over the semester-long class:
“If I’ve done my job, she said in the last class, you won’t be happy with anything you write for the next ten years. It’s not because you won’t be writing well, but because I’ve raised your standards for yourself. Don’t compare yourselves to each other. Compare yourselves to Colette, or Henry James, or Edith Wharton. Compare yourselves to the classics. Shoot there.
She paused. This was another of her fugue states. And then she smiled. We all knew she was right.
Go up to the place in the bookstore where your books will go, she said. Walk right up and find your place on the shelf. Put your finger there, and then go every time.
In class, the idea seemed ridiculous. But at some point after the class ended, I did it. I walked up to the shelf. Chabon, Cheever. I put my finger between them and made a space. Soon, I did it every time I went to a bookstore.
Years later, I tell my own students to do it. As Thoreau, someone Annie admired very much, once wrote, “In the long run, we only ever hit what we aim at.” She was pointing us there.” Alexander Chee, “How to Write an Autobiographical Novel”
It’s good advice to set high standards for yourself, especially if you’ve been working at it a while.
Like Ira Glass says:
“All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.”
Stop worrying about if your work is good or bad and just focus on doing the work.
As if it were only that easy!