be adequate and finish things, try not to be perfect

I managed to make fair to good progress in my proposal writing this week. My twelve proposals (gasp!) are due next Friday and I have them all pretty well finished with only some hole-filling remaining. I did this primarily by purging words onto a page to get the gist of the research idea outlined and then re-writing and refining afterwards. This is a faster and more gratifying technique than my previous laborious technique of crafting each sentence before moving on to the next sentence. I still spend more than the warranted amount of time on each proposal, checking for ease of reading, grammatical perfection, and formatting. But it’s progress, I think. I hope to have all of the proposals ready to submit by Monday.

Stories from the Writing Life

At a dinner party hosted by a fellow writer, I met an engineer who had published eight hundred articles. His publication list, in ten-point type, was thirty-two pages long.

“Eight hundred articles!” I exclaimed. I had never met someone who had published so much, although I knew that engineers tended to publish much more than those in other disciplines. “You’ve got to tell me,” I said, “what is the secret of your success?”

He replied with a smile, “You know, I have one.”

I waited with bated breath and he said, smiling, “Beyond the scope of this article.”

“What?” I said.

“I do a little research, I do a little typing, when I run through what I know and am up against something I don’t, I simply write that such and such is ‘beyond the scope of this article,’ and I’m done. I print it out and send it off.”

This may not seem like genius at first blush, but it is. He has learned that extraordinary skill of knowing when enough is enough. For you must stop and let go of your work if it is ever to be published. This is the secret of his tremendous productivity: stopping.

See www.wendybelcher.com

This seems so wrong…aim for mediocrity, get ‘er done, quantity over quality….all that. But for some people, like myself, this is the only way I’ll get the unimportant-yet-urgent things out of the way so that I can focus on the truly-important-but-seemingly-less-urgent items that are forever getting pushed to the end of my To Do list.

I’m glad I ran across this goal while checking out Turandot 43 Things. Thanks.

and the ms. is by the publisher
to come out in the next 45 days
I feel having fought the nemean lion and the hydra all together!

Confetti and bubbles all around now!

completed my 3rd assessed task for the semester yesterday and sent it off on time!!!

finished my 2nd assessed task : D
Wahoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Use up Cheers when I’ve got them.
Today watched 11 cheers dwindle down to 4 in a matter of one hour.

after taking the resolution
is the Hedgehog paper

and I did it less than 10 days after taking the resolution!
that’s astonishing
particularly considering that I used to be so afraid by the idea of finishing
of not being allowed to make some more changes, and some more…

I must have a problem with this committing to something fixed
every time I do, I change my mind, try to resist, try to change, try to postpone

:yesterday I phoned to see if I could change the date of the flight

if I manage to acquire a taste for finishing
omg, that’d be just what I need
nothing could stop me then!

comes directly from
Emily Toth

the experimental July revolves around this idea:
try not to be perfect
because this principle can easily pass
from the will to do and be one’s best
to the acknowledgement that best is unattainable
thus becoming a great excuse to withdraw

or, as somebody wrote much more briefly:
the perfect is the enemy of the good

I see already that July won’t be enough to plant this seed into my brain
and I want to plan a revolution in my life
around this principle:
that being adequate is just enough.