Perfect is the Enemy of Good
And distraction and procrastination don’t help either.
Sometime ago when I was telling my friend Laura about how painfully slow my writing days can be because I fuss over every single sentence she said, “You know, Susan, perfect is the enemy of good.” I was very impressed. What a fabulous, accurate statement, I thought. Why can’t I ever come up with a quote like that?
Then I discovered she stole it from Voltaire.
I wasn’t too disappointed Laura hadn’t come up with it on her own because she’s one of those brainy types who’s actually read Voltaire so she came by it honestly. Not me. If I discovered that quote you can bet I did so on Facebook or Pinterest or some other non-smartypants site.
It’s true though: Perfect is the enemy of good.
If I could tap out 500–1000 good words a day, I’d be in great shape. But no. I fuss and play with and torture myself over every single solitary word in a sentence to the point that I never, ever, end up with enough sentences to show for the writing time I set aside.
