Is a Thing Worth Doing?

A Venn diagram of the writing life

The cliché is If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well, but is ‘well’ about the effort, the skill, or the achievement? None of those are wholly in one’s own control. On the other hand, my schoolmaster grandfather used to say If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly, which I take to mean that much of the value of doing something is in the doing of it, not in the quality of the outcome.

This post began as a note here on Substack, about a news story which I’m sure many of you read: the Guardian’s story that the book world (by which I think the Guardian means authors and the publishing industry) are turning away from the ‘totally unhinged’ review platform Goodreads. What struck me about the story was the author who was quoted as saying of debut writers

‘I know many people who do have six months of horrible anxiety or depression or spinning out of control, just trying to be frantic getting every single thing right.’ [my italics]

I started thinking about the impossibility of doing everything that someone says would benefit your book, let alone the impossibility of doing it all right - and that got me thinking about how you choose which to do, and which to ignore.

The obvious criterion is what is actually possible: if you live at the very far end of wobbly village broadband, then big Zoom launches are not an option. If you’ve written a bloodcurdling adult erotic horror novel, the sizeable book sales that school visits can generate are not available to you.

Then there’s the cost-benefit analysis: what will it cost you to do a certain thing (in money, time, effort or psyche), relative to how useful the result will be? That can be hard to quantify - for example, blog tours have been going for the best part of two decades and still no one can tell you if they increase sales or not. But ‘useful’ needn’t be restricted to measurable sales or clicks: as authors will tell you at PLR payout time, it’s by no means only about the money. For people like us, in the business of communication, connecting with readers can pay huge dividends in energy and confidence; on the other hand, for many of us the psychic cost of unboundaried social media interaction is even huger.

And the last but crucial criterion, it seems to me, is whether you actually want to do a certain thing. Going with your own psychological and emotional grain is a wise default well beyond the field of creative work. It’s not only that following where your energy wants to go is easier than battling the other way, it’s also that you’ll probably do things better, whether you’re trying to decide what your ‘project’ is, how to deal with feedback, which agent to sign with, whether to accept a certain gig, or what you are and aren’t willing to say to journalists. Note that going with your grain isn’t the same as (mixed metaphor alert!) taking the easy path: it may be more like storming up a fearsome hill because the views along the way will be amazing, and as for when you get to the top …!

Of course, if you want your writing to go more places than the hard-drive equivalent of under the bed, you have to take account of how the world works, and what the people in it want to read, buy, commission or remember. But every time someone says ‘Why don’t you?’ and your fast, intuitive, perhaps silent response is either Yes, I shall!’ or No, of course not!, that hints at the shape of your creative core.

Maybe the Venn diagram looks like this:

This metaphor’s going to fall apart at any moment, but perhaps your grain is the outer, tangible manifestation of your core: of Self, as we’d say in IFS terms. We should remember that ‘author’ and ‘authentic’ are related in origin: staying in touch with why you want and need to create things (and what things you therefore need to create) can be crucial in recognising when you’re near the sweet spot.

And ‘sweet’ doesn’t do it justice: the power, as well as the pleasure, that comes when you are able to work in that place can be formidable. What I’m really arguing for here - and perhaps it’s a thought worth holding on to as we head into the holiday season and towards a new year - is that each of us should …

No, no shoulds or oughts on the Itch. I’ll try again.

Perhaps 2024 is the year for thinking of your writing life holistically. We’ve been separating out three criteria involved in such decisions, but in truth, of course, they’re inseparable. Since trying to be frantic getting everything right is in fact a panic-stricken choice to neglect some parts of our life in favour of others, to the point where life itself gets damaged, we need to make our peace with the impossibility of doing everything. That means making our peace with giving up on imagined outcomes, and with the fear of losing those outcomes forever. For many of us that’s really, really hard to do. FOMO isn’t just terror at not being able to join in the gossip about the marvellous party; at heart it’s fear of losing our place in the tribe, of being excluded and alone, of not surviving.

But the more you can see your whole life - writing life included - as a larger, more interwoven, integrated, single system, the more possible I hope it is to let go of the sense that this one project, opportunity, book, year, or route-to-readers is the only thing that will make work and a life worth having. Sure, you can’t do everything - but that means you don’t have to try to do everything. Seen this way, there are so many different combinations which might create that sweet spot: the space for making something where the energy, the creativity and the joy come together, and after lots of work something new exists which didn’t before. And that is always a thing worth doing.

And with that thought, I want to thank every single one of the heart-warmingly many subscribers and paid-subscriber supporters of This Itch of Writing in its new life on Substack. It’s taken off better than I could have dreamed of, thanks to all of you, and I’m full of plans for next year. If you haven’t already replied to my note asking what you’d like to see on the Itch in 2024, then please do; supporters can also join in the chat on the same topic, as well as starting their own chat in that space (Chat FAQ here).

Over the break the Itch will be following its normal posting schedule on Fridays, alternating free-to-all and supporter-only posts, as well as notes and replies, though I may be a bit slower to respond than normal. In the meantime, I do hope you all have a happy and peaceful time over the holidays, a wonderful Christmas if Christmas is your thing, and a very Happy New Year!

Emma