Done is Better Than Perfect
Because perfect doesn't exist, and we've got to make our ideas real.
We don’t need to make all of our ideas real, but some of them ought to have a chance, don’t you think? We’ve all got loads of artistic, athletic, financial or other creative ideas dancing around in our brains, and some of them are truly excellent, or at least decent enough to deserve a spot in the real world.
But to do that, we’ve got to make ourselves make the thing.
The above book, Real Artists Have Day Jobs, is not a perfect book, but years ago, I completed it. I’ve written half-books and semi-essays and quasi-poems and all sorts of things that never actually got done, but some of them did get done, and some of that latter group became books you can buy. Here’s a link to my website, which lists all my books with buy links.
I’m working my day job today and Friday, but I do have Thanksgiving off.
Anyway, RAHDJ tends to have a little resurgence around the holidays and around graduation time, when people give encouraging books to artists. I hope you’ll get it for yourself (it’s also at the library) or share it with somebody who could use it. It’s quite hopeful and pragmatic, and in some ways I think it’s rather more relevant now than it was when it was published.
I’m spending the holiday with my cats and no one else, and I’m quite pleased about that. It gives me time to rest and to reflect and to work on my next book, ABRAHAM FUCKING LINCOLN, which happens to be a biography of the man who made Thanksgiving a national holiday. That he bears much of the credit for the conclusion of legal enslavement in American and also bears much of the blame for the largest mass execution on American soil to date - all of the victims being Native American men - seems to me to be about as succinct an encapsulation of this country as one can get.
I will spend the day writing about a real man who did many real things, most of them brilliant, some of them awful. His impact is felt deeply today, in too many ways to enumerate in one newsletter or even in one book. That’s probably why over 15,000 books about him have been published since his death.
I will endeavor to make another one real.
I wish you quiet, and rest, and peace if you can get it.
With love and gratitude,
Sara Benincasa