Good is the Enemy of Great

Last week, I had a discussion with friends about this topic as a prompt, and what came up for is that although I am a good writer, I am not a great writer. Of course, the standard is subjective, but I used two objectives: 1) Completed works and 2) Published. While I do have some completed works, it hit me that my output is about 1 essay every 3 months and that’s being generous. While not bad, it is nowhere near close to my goal of getting published a collection of essays. And then the second big one: not only had I not submitted any of my works anywhere, the last time I got published was when one of my short stories got accepted when I graduated from UCLA.

Then it hit me. Fear stops me from being great. The idea of submitting work that may get rejected scares the crap out of me and makes me rewrite essays over and over even they have been critiqued by numerous people. So for me Good means fear and it stops me from being great at writing. That epiphany now confirms me that I get to spend the second part of 2017 to start writing like a banshee and being submitted. Being being “good enough” just doesn’t cut it anymore.