Embracing My Factory Settings
As writers, what can we actually control?
Hello Friends,
This week’s offering is one that I wrote a while ago and sat on, unsure if the larger world really needed another piece of writing from me, a self-proclaimed writer. If you enjoy it or find it helpful at all, I must give credit to who writes inspiring love letters to writers every week on her Substack. She’s got a real gift and a well-deserved following. Check her out.
Peace & music,
Ben
Lately I feel a little overcooked.
I expect a lot out of myself and a lot from the world, especially when it comes to my writing. When things aren’t working, I tend to spin out, wondering if there’s something missing, or inadequate, or just plain broken about me. Since so many writers subscribe to Catch & Release, I thought I might do a little public debugging session in hopes that it offers some insight if you find yourself in a similar struggle.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s immutable about myself and what I actually have the power/will/knowledge to change. There’s a lot of pressure in our society to be more than our base programming, our factory settings. This unrelenting drive to improve, even perfect ourselves and how we operate in the world is mostly a positive thing. It’s arguably the engine behind civilization itself. But the illusion that we can somehow rewire ourselves to conform to an unattainable standard in whatever role we play in society is the source of a lot of quiet suffering.
There has to be a point at which we know, accept, and embrace the animal we are, meaning the collection of baked-in traits that define how we do what we do. I’m sure there are more than three career-defining traits for writers, but I want to focus on these today:
Validation - the need to be liked, to be praised
Perfectionism - the obsession to get things right
Completionism - the imperative to finish things
Where you and I fall on the spectrum of these three traits dictates how we approach the work we do, how we relate to others, and how we feel about ourselves.
Perfect is the Enemy of…?
Before we get into perfectionism, I have to share something tragically ironic I discovered about the Voltaire quote: “Perfect is the enemy of good.” It seems the sands of time have worked their friction on the last word of the quote, stripping away its moral superiority to reveal its base, utilitarian meaning: “done.” So basically, good and done are synonymous which explains a lot about the brave new world we live in. We’ll unpack this more when I get to completionism later.
I want to be the best damned writer I can be and there’s never a day that goes by where I don’t grapple with the feeling that I’ll never be a “great” writer because I don’t have the wiring of a great write. I don’t approach the work the way a great writer does. I haven’t read the entire canon of Russian masters, peeling away the layers of meaning and riddling the margins of the pages with my thoughts and reactions. When writing, I don’t anguish over 47 drafts of a chapter before I move on to write the next. Chasing that level of perfection is just not in my programming. While I understand the idea that there’s just one way to be a great writer is absurd, it’s never stopped me from feeling diminished and even defeated because I don’t measure up to this standard.
The great writers, whether we’re talking about historical luminaries like James Joyce and Leo Tolstoy or recent Pulitzer prize winners like Donna Tartt or Paul Harding, have perfection dials pegged at ten. Writers in this category don’t just see the forest or the trees or even the bark, they see the cellular structure within a leaf and they’re not satisfied until they’ve rendered it perfectly. By all accounts, this takes methodical drafting, rewriting, and when called for, burning the entire manuscript before rewriting the entire thing from memory. Contrast that with prolific writers like Stephen King or Dean Koontz whose perfection dials couldn’t possibly go over a five and deliver as many completed manuscripts as they do and you begin to see what I’m talking about. Categorically, these are all successful writers. People seek out, read, and enjoy their work and that’s only possible because these writers were able to embrace their factory settings and work with what they have. Put simply, they were able get out of their own way which allowed them to keep going, and keeping-going is ultimately all that matters.
So, I have to accept that my perfection dial, which hovers around a seven on good days when I’m at full tilt, will safely keep me out of the running for a Pulitzer. On the upside, that three points of buffer between me and the mania of a perfect 10 affords me the ability to move on to other projects and to make space for other things that matter in my life.
Love Me, Please
It’s the next trait though, the need for validation, which is the killer. So much of my life has been shaped by my need for approval, my need to be liked, to be praised for something I’ve done. I think it’s common for artists of any stripe to have validation dials cranked far beyond the average person. We live in the 9 to 10 range always looking for our opening to demonstrate our cleverness, our industry, our kindness, our generosity— whatever gets the most likes. Every time I hit the “publish” button on anything I’ve written (and that’s a well-worn button), I cringe a little bit at the obvious, “look at me!” plea that I fear is all anyone else will see. The absence of “likes,” subscribers, reviews, or book sales can cast a long shadow of doubt that can make me feel like giving up some days. But an abundance of praise can turn your creative process into a sausage factory where you bend all efforts in an attempt to recreate that thing that made the world love you. When you live at the top end of the need-for-validation scale, it’s hard to imagine a life free of it.
But there certainly are examples. Franz Kafka didn’t want anyone to see him. He demanded that all his work be burned after his death. He gave zero fucks and wasn’t writing to please anyone, in fact, his goal was to do the opposite, to agitate. I don’t get the sense that Percival Everett, this year’s winner of the Pulitzer prize, and a writer I greatly admire, cares too much about what people think. He writes for the joy of the process and cares very little about looking back at how the 24 novels he’s written are performing in the marketplace. His ambition, it seems, is to go deep into whatever story he’s crafting so he can continue to push the boundaries of the form.
I don’t believe it’s possible to change this need-for-validation setting in a meaningful way that has lasting effects, which means I have to accept that it will always factor into how I write and publish my work. If there’s an upside to being a solid 9 on this trait, it’s that it forces a level of vulnerability, insisting I keep the door open to connect with people, whether it’s an audience of one or one-thousand. I’ll always see the process of putting art into the world like a conversation, not a monologue.
Are we there yet?
The third in this trifecta of (mostly) immutable traits that shape writers and our output is Completionism — the degree to which we obsess over finishing things versus abandoning them. If you’re in the 1 to 3 range, you probably have a hard drive full of documents named “Untitled (213).docx” with opening paragraphs, prologues, and first chapters that stop abruptly, yawning into the abyss. If you operate in the 8 to 10 range, you likely have a spreadsheet itemizing every story, novel, and poem you’ve written and published since you were twelve.
A true completionist writer gains as much or more satisfaction from finishing and publishing the work as they do from the writing process. Like a collector, they gain satisfaction from having an office wall filled with framed covers of their books. Heaven help them if they fill that wall and start another book because they will not rest until they’ve completed enough books to fill that wall too. It would be incomplete to do otherwise. I don’t think this is shallow or vacuous behavior unbecoming of a true artist. There’s a deep satisfaction in the symmetry of closing the loop on something we start— that’s a human thing. Without the presence of this trait in a writer, there would be no books so it’s kind of important. Where I think it becomes problematic is when there’s no more love for the thing you’re doing and it’s only about closing the square and coloring it in.
The writer who operates on the low end of the completionism scale is blessed with the courage to put something down when it’s not working but they must also contend with a restless, fickle relationship to the work that requires them to always be in the honeymoon period to keep going. We all know someone who is cursed with being stuck on either extreme of this trait and both extremes are equally paralyzing and very hard to change. I count myself fortunate to fall in the 5 to 7 range and that’s served me well. I complete more things than I abandon, but I’m also guilty of allowing the finish line to unnecessarily distract me at times. I get impatient and ready for the next thing and it takes real work to buckle down and do the hard work of listening to that unpopular inner editor that says it’s not quite right and needs another draft.
Where does that leave me?
Perfectionism: 6-7
The good: I have the attention span and level of discernment required to write a good story that manages to avoid gaping holes in plot, under-cooked characters, and obvious tropes.
The bad: I’m never going to be vanguard who will set the literary world on fire— a writer’s writer who will one day pen a novel that reimagines the form.Validation: 9-10
The good: I won’t ever be a pompous, navel-gazing writer who never considers the notion that a novel, at it’s base level, should be entertaining and to be entertaining it must consider the reader.
The bad: I will never feel good enough and will continue to seek praise and external metrics as a signal to keep going.Completionism: 7-8
The good: I’ve written nearly 200 songs and released five albums of original music. I’ve written dozens of short stories and five novels, four of which I’ve published— three as serials here on Substack.The bad: In a world where it’s relatively easy as an artist to self-publish, I’m constantly plagued by the notion that maybe everything I’ve done is absolute shit and I should’ve toiled away in the garage for a few more years polishing one brilliant thing before putting it out into the world. Maybe if I had done that, I would’ve landed a major record label deal or later, a publishing contract with one of the big four publishing houses.
What exploring all this has taught me is that the only way to pull out of the spiral I find myself in is to accept and even try to embrace my factory settings. I think many writers have a strong impulse for control which is partly why we retreat into the world of the page because, theoretically it’s a world where we can control all the variables. But the idea that we have this much control over anything is folly. So much of what we consider success or failure in the world is the result of the circumstances of our birth, the nudges we received or love that was withheld, the timing of our coming of age as an artist, the whimsy of cultural taste and pure, incomprehensible luck.
The only lever I can pull is the throttle to keep me moving down the tracks. To quote from a song with a fantastically mixed metaphor I wrote in my thirties:
There’s a light at the end of this tunnel and I swear that it’s not a train
There’s a hole down below this funnel, it sucks but it’s not a drain.
What are your settings?
The best part of posting pieces like this one is the conversations they can inspire. What are your factory settings? Do you think you can change them?
This reminded me of a story I heard about Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, where Dylan asks Cohen how long it took to write Hallelujah and Cohen says a couple years (when it was closer to a decade!) And Cohen asks how long it took to write Like A Woman and Dylan says 15 minutes. We all have different factory settings!
Ben this is a brilliantly written piece, which has really forced thought about my tactics
because I shamefully admit 'embracing my factory settings' is not a place I've contemplated even remotely for one simple reason; time.
I am constantly amazed at how regularly some people pump out an awesome post and still talk about their day job and families and friends as if they all just slot into holes perfectly aligned and timed!
How do they do that?
How do you do that?
I don't doubt, if I had more of this seemingly rare and expensive commodity I may well think more often about validation, thinking of it now, yeah, sure, its wonderful to see those little hearts lighting up, today I received a message from Substack saying I am #33 rising in climate and environment. And sure, it was a wow moment, it made my day but what do I do with it, it doesn't change anything because I don't have the time to allow it.
Perfection I can draw a line through immediately as confirmed by one rather blunt subscriber a couple of posts ago... the less said the better, I am never going to be awarded the perfect 10/10. I write what I see and feel, edit until I love what I read back, hope that my subscribers will too and post. I don't have time for fine tuning because the laundry is waiting, my sheep are calling or ivy is growing under the tiles on the barn roof and I need to drag a ladder up to cut it back, and and and...
Completion... if I tell you that I have over 20 unfinished drafts, not to mention the hand written novel gathering dust in a box under my bed, and several attempts at a memoire you'll understand I why this too is a mute point.
But, I love writing, I cannot imagine stoping ever, even if the slots for doing so are fleeting, I write to share my good fortune in the hope that the words brighten the day of others... that's all.