No. 34: Is It Good Enough?

Answering the Question That Has No Answer

Sometimes I wonder if we could eliminate half the problems in the world with a simple question —

Is it Good Enough?

The older I get, the more I realize that it might be the only thing you need to succeed in life, both the ability to ask the question again and again, often hundreds of times a day, and to answer it with the same conscientious obsession.

Even in the first few hours today:

Is the sleep I got good enough to power me through the full day? (Eh, might need a 20 min nap later.)

Is the tennis I’m currently playing against a D1 college player this morning good enough to stop me from beating myself up about my level the rest of the day? (No, I’m being a weenie, gotta push harder in the last 15 mins.)

Is a quick bowl of coconut yogurt and granola good enough for breakfast today? (No, I’ll be hungry but I have no more food in the fridge and no time to get some, so deal with it.)

Is my parking job in the garage good enough to not have the pesky neighbor bother me about being too close to him? (No, let’s do it again.)

Is my morning call with my partner fun and warm and connected enough for both of us to get through the day apart from each other and not miss each other too much? (Mmm, might need a redux at lunch.)

Is Chapter 24 of YOUNG WORLD good enough where I can really settle into the revision, knowing it’s hit minimum level, and start to amp things up confidently? (No. Almost. Needs more work.)

This is the running monologue in my head, I’ve realized. The same question over, over, over. Is. It. Good. Enough. Because that’s what life is, the ability to judge in an instant, whether the effort you’ve given or the circumstances you’ve created or attracted are good enough, in small moments and big, and if they are good enough, then boom, you accept it and let it go, and if they’re not, then it’s time to dig in and work harder.

But I am making all this sound easier than it is.

Because many times in life our Good Gauge is off — at any point in life, we might be exhausted or lazy or coddled or delusional or simply have no idea the Level we are capable of, because we’ve settled too easily for something below our own par.

In the early days of New Novel, aka YOUNG WORLD, I gave myself too much grace.

I was coming off twelve years of writing fairy tales and felt like I’d figured out my writing style and my way of doing things, and I just plunged into YOUNG WORLD thinking it would all go click-click-click, the way things always did. I wrote the first 65 pages of the book in 8 weeks, the full Part One, and told my agent I’d send it to him, since he had no clue what I’d been writing.

Peter Knapp, agent extraordinaire.

The night before, I remember having a sinking feeling. The vague, slippery ethers of the question — Is It Good Enough — somewhere in me, but still unformed. If I’d asked myself the question, then, I would have known the answer was No. But I just didn’t have that fierce simplicity available yet. A decade of School for Good and Evil had trained me to trust my flow, but this time my flow had taken me in the wrong direction, because my direction was oriented towards luxuriously fantastical shores. My compass was off. And for that reason, I sent the kindlings of YOUNG WORLD off to my agent next day, my body tense with dread rather than excitement.

He called the next day. “I don’t know how to say this but… it’s not good.”

All I felt was relief. “I know it isn’t. Thank you.”

Something in that one exchange changed me as a person. All the intensity, emotions, psychosis of mental gymnastics that we put ourselves through reduced to a single question: Is It Good Enough or Is It Not Good Enough. A question I could ask myself as long as I could be savagely truthful in return — and thus spare myself the surprise of having untoward feedback delivered by the world.

I deleted the 65 pages.

Started the book over.

Two years and millions of micro and macro Is It Good Enough questions to myself later, this time I know it is.

Which is why last week, we started previewing YOUNG WORLD to book scouts, foreign pubs, Hollywood, the first 250 pages or so, with the confidence of knowing how it would be received.

Of course, this leaves an obvious question — How do you know it’s good enough? And this is where I give the shittiest, most opaque response, which is that you know when…

…there’s no answer.

Anytime I ask myself the question about a chapter in YOUNG WORLD and hear the noise in my head — “It’s soooo good” “It’s a masterpiece” “It’s crap” “It’s boring” “It’s stupid” “It’s a bestseller” “It’s a no-seller” — I know there’s more work to do. Any response from the ego, whether good or bad, means the thing isn’t ready for primetime.

When it finally is, though, I know because the question itself falls away to silence. What’s left is this big, calm nothing, this empty peace that suggests the thing has travelled from the darkness of inspiration to the efflorescence of life and not left even a strand of itself back in the womb.

Silence is my guide, now. Every time I find it, I know it’s time to move on to a new chapter.

If this is all too Woo Woo, then welcome to my diary, you must be a new reader. But also, I know I’m being obtuse so here’s a more relatable story.

My partner and I went to watch his 16 year-old nephew play basketball — he is an enormously gifted athlete and even at 14 and 15, commanded the court with such smooth, confident ease that you felt it was inevitable the clutch shots would end up in his hands. Thirteen months ago, though, he tore his ACL, which took him off the court for the year.

Today was the first time in 13 months that my partner and I got to watch him play competitively post-surgery. First half was brilliant. The ball-handling. The smoothness. The sheer talent. By second half, though, he was mouth-breathing for air and falling behind on both defense and offense, a shadow of himself.

My partner, a former D1 basketball player and one of the best high school players ever out of Missouri, clocked it pretty quick — that his nephew was short on conditioning and the only way back to his former level and beyond would be a lot of painful work on the track, bike, row machine.

But is his former level what we are after?? The kid was playing 13 months after ACL repair! Surely that in itself was good enough. The recovery from major knee surgery is so long and arduous, that truly anything a 16 year-old does in his comeback is miraculous, let alone playing at peak high school level a year out. For us, him being here was Good Enough. More than Good Enough. But what was Good Enough for him?

“How’d it feel?” we asked on the way home.

He didn’t hesitate. “Started good in the first half. Then got way tired and ran out of gas. Been lifting weights and stuff, but not enough cardio.”

When he was out of earshot, my partner raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t need to say a thing.”

“Kid’s got it,” I responded. “And I don’t mean in basketball.”

Because that’s the thing. Once you learn to answer the question Is It Good Enough in your sport of choice — writing is mine — then you can start asking it in every aspect of your life with the same brutal realism and honesty.

Is my relationship good enough?

Is my connection to my family good enough?

Are my friendships good enough?

Is my health good enough?

Is my life good enough?

And if you’re greeted with big, calm, yawning silence in return, a silence that swallows you up like a black hole universe… then that usually means that it is.

Goodness. Villains last week. Existential black holes this week. What am I going to write about next week?

In the meantime, tell me what the question — Is It Good Enough? — sparks for you…

Until next week!