This One’s Not Going to be Great
And That’s Okay
There are only a handful of albums that I can listen to without skipping a single song:
- Hot Fuss by The Killers
- Rumours by Fleetwood Mac
- Kind of Blue by Miles Davis
- Favorite Worst Nightmare by Arctic Monkeys
- Ella and Louis by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
Some of the greatest bands in history have released tons of albums replete with “skip tracks” as I call them. “Skip tracks” are the songs you skip to get to the hits. You’ve got to be in a certain kind of mood to listen to those forgettable songs. If we are being honest, a playlist of your favorite band probably has less songs than you have fingers, even if they’ve been around for decades, but it doesn’t take away from the band’s greatness. We remember the hits and forget the rest because they are icons.
The same is true for writers. Most of the best writers have an immense anthology of stories, poems, and books but few of us know them all. Edgar Allen Poe has volumes of shorts and poems but we remember The Raven and The Tell-Tale Heart. His other works aren’t bad, they are great but the hits are remarkable. There is no magic formula for writing an unforgettable piece, but some compositions were cooked with the secret sauce of success. The trick is finishing and distributing all of your creations, whether you think they are great or not. You may not be the best judge of your own work.
I have two examples that prove my point.
- Anthony Kiedis, frontman of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, was in the studio when virtuoso producer Rick Rubin asked what he was working on. Kiedis tells Rubin that he wrote a poem but hasn’t been able to come up with any songs. Rubin asks to hear the poem but Kiedis doesn’t think it as any good. It turns out his poem became one of the biggest hits of their career and the unofficial anthem of Los Angeles, Under the Bridge.
- Mario Puzo thought he had a masterpiece in his failed book, The Fortunate Pilgrim (1965) but the market didn’t agree with him. Some years later, when pressed by a loan shark to repay a debt, he wrote The Godfather. Puzo also wrote the script for the '70s Superman movie starring Christopher Reeve.
We are our own worst critics, so we often need someone who doesn’t hate us as much as we do to honestly evaluate our work. That is why writers need editors and agents who push them to finish their stories. Their job is to turn a good idea into a great one that is also marketable.
I’m writing this to encourage you to be kind to yourself as you write and to recognize that others can see what you are unable to see in yourself. Finish your work(s) and put it in their hands to champion. Learn from others who have gone through something similar to learn from their mistakes. One of those stories is bound to be a hit.
Read The Creative Act by Rick Ruben for more inspiration.
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