You Don’t Have to be Good Enough

Do you have the grit to do the work anyway?

I’ve written about this before. I’ll keep writing about it, because I think it’s important.

You do not have to be ‘good enough’ to write. You can write even if you aren’t a good writer.

In fact, if you want to be a writer who doesn’t stink, there is no other way to get there.

Human beings are hardwired to want to be somebody. Everyone wants to be an outlier — in the good way. The one who hits a grand slam on the first at bat. We want that so bad that it can be hard to accept when it doesn’t happen.

What happens so often is that when we strike out or maybe manage a single on our first at bat — we want to take our ball and go home. Screw this, we think. I’m not good enough. I’m not doing this.

Never mind that what we’ve done is right in line with what pretty much everyone does. That one guy hit it out of the park. Anything less than that is failure.

But the thing is that everyone starts out not good enough. Everyone.

Seriously. Going back to the baseball analogy — most of the time even the rarified person who manages a grand slam with their first swing isn’t really good enough. They just managed to swing at the exact right pitch, at the exact right moment, while cameras were pointed at them.

They have plenty of strike outs in their future.

This comment popped up the other day on a post I wrote on this subject a few weeks ago.

I get where Barry is coming from. Because it is undeniable that audacity is a job requirement if you want to be a writer. How else could you possibly muster the courage and will to stick with it long enough to not stink?

You have to find a way to both be okay with starting where you are (even if where you are is ‘not good enough’) and still love what you’re creating so that you’ll keep creating it.

There is only one question that really matters, if you have it in your mind that you want to be a writer.

Are you willing to do the work, even if you’re not good enough?

If the answer is yes, keep writing. Learn how to be a better writer. The only way to do that is kinesthetically. You have to learn by doing. You can read every book, go to every conference, but if you don’t put what you’re learning into action you won’t get better.

If the answer is no — well, you probably wouldn’t have read this far in this post if the answer is no. But if it’s not, go forth and do something else.

But, if the answer is I don’t know, take heart. You are not the only one who isn’t good enough.

The secret sauce is that if you’re willing to do the work, you’re already ahead at the game. Even the guy who strikes out the first time at bat had the grit and gumption to get to the plate.

Here’s my secret weapon for sticking with whatever your thing is.

Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She is an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, two dementia patients, a good friend, Alfred the cat, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes and is the original Ninja Writer.