On finishing things badly
A finished draft you dislike is worth more than a perfect one you are still describing to people.
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I have finished two books and abandoned four. The two I finished are worse ideas than at least two of the four I abandoned. This is not modesty, it is just what the notebooks say.
Which raises a question worth sitting with: if the quality of the idea does not predict whether a thing gets finished, what does?
Finishing is a separate skill and nobody teaches it
We talk about ideas and we talk about craft, and we act as though completion is what happens automatically when those two are present in sufficient quantity. In my experience it is a third thing, learned separately, and mostly consisting of a willingness to hand over something you can still see the faults in.
Anne Lamott is quoted endlessly on terrible first drafts, and the part everyone skips is what she says about the second: that you have to tolerate being bored by your own material. A finished bad draft is a real object that can be improved. A perfect unfinished one is an anecdote you tell at parties, and I told mine for three years.
(One of the four abandoned books is still, I think, the best thing I have ever thought of. I have described it to about forty people. This is exactly the problem.)
Two finished books that I can see the faults in, and four perfect ones that do not exist. I know which pile taught me more.
