In praise of just finishing

Why the most imperfect published book is better than the most perfect manuscript

One of the temptations all writers face is to spend just a little more time— this summer, another semester, another year, that next sabbatical— polishing a manuscript. But I’ve come to the conclusion that an imperfect published book is better than the most perfect unpublished manuscript.

Finishing is good for you!

Having a book published delivers enormous psychological gratification. Sending off a book manuscript is liberating, and each milestone— the final edits, the page proofs, the book cover, the advance copies, the launch— is a cause for celebration. I've published four books, which together they've been translated two dozen times, and holding a new copy in your hands for the first time never gets old. (Even the pirated Chinese and Farsi editions are kind of cool.)

Conversely, unfinished projects are mentally draining. As psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik observed a century ago, incomplete tasks divert lots of our attention and cause stress. An unfinished manuscript carries the additional risk (and worry) that if you spend too long revising, the delay itself could create additional work.

If you have something you really think is worth sharing, it's better to say it than to stay silent. Even if you don't express an ideal perfectly, your readers will get something from hearing it. More than a decade after it was published, I still get messages from people who discover The Distraction Addiction and share their stories with me.

The upsides of having the book out in the world, having it reach readers and be of use to them, and having permission to move on to the next project, outweigh the potential downsides of disappointing sales, or less-than-stellar reviews, or typos or clumsy turns of phrase.

More time ≠ success

Holding back a book reflects a misunderstanding about what makes books good and successful.

We often hear a well-received book described as "a work of genius," rarely "a product of organization and hard work," or "the product of a great partnership between author and editor," or "just lucky." The book-as-work-of-genius trope encourages us to think that the more time you spend on a book, and that the success of a book is under your control. (It also encourages a fixed rather than growth mindset about writing and success: that natural and unchanging ability, not learnable skills, determine a book's fate.)

Good books are not good because of your labor or IQ alone. As the author you have the idea, and you do most of the heavy lifting, but a good book is a collaborative project. Every book I've written has been made stronger and clearer by the advice of my agent, the criticism of my editors, and the sharp eyes of copyeditors. Working alone for 10 years, you may improve a manuscript by X; but your editors and producers can improve it by 10X in 1 year. But your book can only get that 10X boost if you share it with people who are specialists, can look at it with fresh eyes, and apply their special skills to it.

Books succeed for reasons that are outside your control, thanks to the choices of people you may never meet and institutions you cannot influence. My book Rest got a huge boost from a New York Times review by Arianna Huffington, and an Instagram post by Kimberly Williams-Paisley, an actor (Father of the Bride) living in Nashville (her spouse is country music star Brad Paisley). The publication of Shorter was accompanied by an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, a profile of me in the Financial Times, and a book excerpt in the Guardian; but it landed in bookstores in March 2020, the day before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down everything. As a result, sales have never been as strong as Rest.

If a book becomes a classic or a bestseller, it's less because of what you've done than what your readers do. This is more true in a social media-saturated age than ever. But under the best of circumstances, competition for readers' attention is intense, and you have little control over the factors that help a book catch fire. All you can do is write the best book you can, promote it as well as you can, recognize that there are highly deserving books that never find their audiences— and apply what you learn to the next book. In fact, there will probably be lots of times during the process when you think, I can do better. You can. The place to do better is the next book.

The odds of having a successful book are not improved by investing a huge amount of time on one book. They tilt in your favor if you write and publish more books.

It’s a party not the Parthenon

Finally, perfection is a chimera. No one will ever write the perfect book. Recognizing that perfection is unattainable can be liberating not depressing: it gives you permission to practice a writerly version of mak, a Korean concept expressing a willingness to embrace the unfinished and unrefined, and of privileging the act of creation over the pursuit of perfection. Never sacrifice your professional standards, but don't feel the need to reach for an impossible goal.

Don't think of a book as a grand monument, or the last word on its subject, but a turn in a conversation. You're not building the Parthenon. You're throwing a party.

But that reality is liberating, not demoralizing. It's better for you to write the best book you can, to the highest standard you can manage, until your deadline.

Writing is an infinite game

The last reason for taking this approach is that writing is an infinite game.

If you think of the objective as just finishing this one great book, then maybe it makes sense to spend a larger chunk of your life on it. But most of us don’t want to write just one book; we want to keep on writing.

Any single book project is a finite game. Writing is an infinite game.

You can learn more about how to play the infinite game if you write more; if you go through the process more times; have the opportunity to learn from more editors, critics, coauthors, etc.; and have more to share with your readers, more readers, and more chances to interact with them.

So invest in improving yourself as an author, not perfecting this one book. Then send it in, clear your desk, take a break, and get ready for the next book.

Also, if you want more advice: