The Writer Who Knows Too Much

There is a particular kind of writer who takes forever to finish writing, if ever they do.

She is well-read. She knows what good writing feels like—the sentence that lands just right, the scene that breaks your heart a little, the character who feels more real than most people you know. She has excellent taste, and she has standards, and she applies both to everything she writes.

And because she applies them too early—to the first draft, the rough chapter, the imperfect beginning—she decides she isn’t good enough and she stops.

Meanwhile, the writer with standards that are vague at best, charges ahead. She doesn’t agonise over sentences. She doesn’t lie awake wondering if her metaphors are working. She finishes the book, puts it into the world, and moves on to the next one.

This seems unfair. But it is also reassuring.

The writer who stopped might well be the better writer. But if her talent remains hidden behind the firewall of her own high standards, what’s the use? No appreciation, no accolades, no chance to get better. Frustration and a feeling of taking her music to the grave. No no no! That cannot be allowed!

Self-doubt in writers is not evidence of poor writing. It is evidence of taste. You cannot be tormented by the gap between what you wrote and what you meant to write unless you know what good writing feels like. That knowledge—that taste—is not a liability. It is the most essential thing a writer can have.

The problem is not the taste. The problem is the verdict.

Somewhere between reading the draft and closing the document, the writer with taste makes a catastrophic error of judgement. She mistakes the gap—the distance between the first draft and the finished book—for proof that she cannot do it. She treats the beginning as if it were the end.

But the gap is not proof of inadequacy. The gap is the work.

Every writer who has ever produced something worth reading has sat in that gap. Has looked at the distance between what she wrote and what she meant and felt the specific despair of the writer who knows too much. The ones who finished did not do so because the gap closed on its own. They did so because they kept writing anyway—because they trusted that the gap could be closed, one imperfect draft at a time.

The first draft is not your writing. It is your thinking. The writing—the real writing—is what happens when you go back.

If you are the writer who knows too much—who reads your own work with a forensic and unforgiving eye, who has abandoned chapters because they fell short of what you imagined—I want you to consider something.

Your standards are not the problem. Your timing is.

Apply your taste to a finished draft and it will make the work better. Apply it to a first draft and it will stop the work from existing at all.

Write first. Judge later. The Divine doesn’t need to prove their divinity before they act.

They act. And the divinity reveals itself in the acting.

If you are sitting on an abandoned draft—chapters you walked away from because you decided you weren’t good enough to finish them—come and talk about it. Every Thursday at 7pm my business partner Nirja and I sit with a small group of writers on Google Meet. It’s called Pen to Print, and it’s free for members of The Write Place, my writing community.

The draft deserves a second look. So do you.

Mother of three adult, opinionated humans. An idealistic, outspoken woman of scrupulous integrity. Editor, coach, ghostwriter and storyteller. And a passionate bibliophile, of course.