How Can You Know Something Is Good Before it Exists?

Also: how to make a papercut.

Yes yes, a new print.

Hello friends,

I was lamenting this week with some friends about the difficulty of writing, and in response, I was told to read John McPhee’s essay “Draft No. 4.”¹ From 2013, it pretty perfectly encapsulates a lot of the drama that one can feel when stuck in a muddle of words and ideas, and the despair and self-loathing that can so easily ensue.

McPhee writes:

You are working on a first draft and small wonder you’re unhappy. If you lack confidence in setting one word after another and sense that you are stuck in a place from which you will never be set free, if you feel sure that you will never make it and were not cut out to do this, if your prose seems stillborn and you completely lack confidence, you must be a writer. If you say you see things differently and describe your efforts positively, if you tell people that you “just love to write,” you may be delusional. How could anyone ever know that something is good before it exists?

If you do any writing, then I think that last line will particularly resonate.

Visual art of course, is a bit different. When we’ve made something, it does exist as a tangible object outside of our imagination. Even then: how could anyone ever know that it’s good or not?

As we have covered a few times in the last few weeks, “good” and “bad” don’t tell a full truth. “Bad” can simply be synonymous with “practice,” just another step in our ongoing process of pushing the edges of our creative growth. These concepts are also entirely subjective. What I deem as “bad” in my eyes might be great in someone else’s.

We are our own worst critics, and damn are we good at it.

McPhee continues in his essay, discussing the cycles that come with writing, and how endless that beginning part can feel.