How Perfect is the Enemy of Good

And why Hemingway is Wrong

“The first draft of anything is shit.” Hemingway

This is a quotation often quoted by writers to other writers. It was apparently said by Hemingway to Arnold Samuelson, himself an aspiring writer, in 1934. Samuelson only told people Hemingway had said this fifty years after, so the provenance is dubious.

But like many phrases of dubious origins, it has been preserved because it has a resonance, especially with writers. We find this quotation reassuring. I’ve quoted it to aspiring sitcom writers who know that their first draft of their first attempt at a script isn’t going to be pretty or funny. It almost certainly isn’t. But it’s reassuring to know that even the great Hemingway wrote bad first drafts. But were they bad? Or were they just not perfect? That’s what we’re considering here today.

The Pain of Writing

Writing is undoubtedly painful. It always gets you somewhere along the line. Either you’re the kind who agonises over every word as it is slowly typed, or you’re the kind of writer who splurges and writes long (this is sometimes called a ‘vomit draft’ as it is spewed onto the page). Then the cutting process begins, with cut after cut after cut.

So it’s either agony at the time of writing or a death of thousand cuts later. Either way, it’s not a happy experience, even when it’s an enjoyable one.

This never goes away. A script is never finished. There are always multiple drafts until you eventually run out of time. At some point you have to film it, record it, submit it or print it.

“Film it, love. It’s perfect,” said no writer, ever. The best you might get out of me is:

“Broadly speaking, I think I’m okay with it.”

Could Be Better

Everything could be better. That doesn’t necessarily make the first draft as excremental as Hemingway suggests.

I mention this because I was thinking about the creation mandate we find in Genesis, thanks to some brilliant talks by Al Gordon at the Keswick Unconventional. (Lots of the ideas are in his book here). He looks at those early chapters of Genesis which are beguiling simple. We can leap to conclusions about what the simple words mean, rushing in to fill out the bare bones of the text.

What I mean is this: In Genesis 1, God makes things and declares them ‘good’. And on the sixth day, everything is declared ‘very good’. Because this paradise seems idyllic and untainted, we rush to assume that ‘good’ means ‘perfect’. It’s 100%. Flawless. Couldn’t be better. We use terms like this loosely in every day life in answers to questions like ‘How are you?’, ‘How was the concert?’ or ‘How was your dinner?’

The Bible says God uses the word ‘good’, which means, well, ‘good’. There is a pleasingly wholesome and morally correct aspect to it. In fact, the word ‘good’ is probably derived from the word ‘God’. But good doesn’t really mean perfect. In fact, something can be ‘very good’, and still not be perfect. And we learn in chapter 2 that this idyllic paradise contains something ‘not good’: the solitude of the man. So is the Garden of Eden perfect? Is that even a helpful question?

I’m digging in on this because the very purpose of mankind is at stake, along with what we will be doing for eternity. So, it’s probably quite significant. What is man made to do? Let’s have a look. And it comes twice, because we tend not to pay attention the first time.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Did you spot it? Have dominion over the fish, the birds and the animals. (Interesting it’s have dominion, not ‘be stewards’ which is a common way of expressing this but that’s one for another time) And be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.

Subdue it? Yes, because gardens require gardening. Gardens keep growing. Even ‘very good’ ones. Even those perfectly manicured geometrically perfect French gardens. Plants are fruitful. Seeds burst out and need collecting, planting in the right place, and tending – and eating.

It’s easy to assume that all this work is the result of the Fall, and the presence of sin and the legacy of the curse. No. The Fall gives us weeds and thorns, and makes food production harder, and creation now groans.

Notes on Draft 1

But let’s be clear that there was a good garden that wasn’t some hopelessly ham-fisted draft 1. It was good. And I’ll bet Hemingway’s draft ones were pretty good too. Neither were they perfect. Like the Garden of Eden. It was good. And man’s job was to improve it. And make it better. And it still is. And will be for ever.

Staring into Eternity

Maybe you have a problem getting your head around what the Bible means when we read about going from ‘glory to glory’, or, as the ESV puts it, ‘one degree of glory to another’. How can that be?

We need to understand how draft 1 maybe isn’t so bad and could be better. It was exhilarating, expressing an idea in a way that felt fresh and original. But it still needed work. Draft 2, then, was an improvement. As was draft 3. By the time you get to draft 9, you may retrospectively be ashamed of that ham-fisted dog’s breakfast of a draft 1. But that’s just an emotional response. It wasn’t that bad. It was good. A good start. But it wasn’t very good. Not yet. And maybe it still isn’t. But it’s going to be glorious. And even that won’t be the end. Because death has been swallowed up, we will never run out of time.

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18)

Or, as Hemingway should have said, “The first draft of anything could be better.”

Would you like a signed copy of my books?

Sure you would. Currently, I sell them directly to customers in the UK, but that is coming to an end very soon, as I try to jump headlong back into developing and writing sitcom scripts for the TV.

Whilst it’s fun to marvel at how the Royal Mail prices bear no relation to the denominations of stamps you can actually buy, there comes a time when you need to stop navigating the Kafkaesque mail system, stop shipping your own books and let Amazon or Waterstones take up the slack. So if you want a signed copy of The Sacred Art of Joking or The Gospel According to a Sitcom Writer – perhaps as a Christmas or birthday present? – you’ll need to order before the end of August. Or come to a gig. Or, even better, book me for a Water into Wine gig (Yeovil on 23rd Sept)

You can do that or find out more by getting in touch here.