The Best I Can Do

I recently finished the fourth draft of a novel. It ran to about 309 pages, and at the end of it, I was happy because I think I finally got the ending right, more or less.

I had finished this work just in time to bring some of it to a writer’s conference that had accepted my application and writing sample. The conference is one of the best in California, at Squaw Valley near Lake Tahoe. Some of the faculty and featured writers at this conference this year included Amy Tan, Dagoberto Gilb, Richard Ford, Lynn Freed, and many others. 

I got into the conference on the strength, or so I thought, of the first chapter of my novel. I was with other writers who were at varying stages in the writing of their work. And as is true of most conferences, the writers at this one were also varied in the degree of openness they felt to criticism of their work. I could be included in this group. You’d think that because I’d just written a fourth draft of my work, I was ready to publish it—more than ready—not in a place to receive more criticism.

The Feedback

Well, the feedback I received from my mentor during one-on-one criticism was both affirming and enlightening. He gave me some very good advice about character development, and I admit that this helped me to return from the conference and write further revisions. Yes, I have gotten started on a fifth revision. He was right about what he’d pointed out in several places of the manuscript.

There was another issue that took up our time, though, and that had to do with how I envisioned my work. My mentor claimed that he saw in it a comic novel, sort of in the vein of Richard Russo’s Straight Man, one of my favorite novels, I should add. I was flattered, of course. But he also thought that my voice was too quiet. He thought I should ratchet up the humor, even go over the top. I assured him that I was not that kind of writer.

He felt I should be. But he also noted that he was just one reader.

Is This the Best You Can Do?

A few other writers I talked to at the conference rejected this mentor’s advice for their work. They knew exactly what they wanted to do, and they weren’t there for criticism but, apparently, affirmation.

But I wasn’t so sure anymore. I had gone believing that I had just done the best I could with my writing. I have heard Joseph Bentz, a prolific writer of eight published books, say that he works on a book until it is the best he can do. Then he submits it. Alex Espinoza, one of the featured writers at Squaw Valley, echoed Bentz’s words when he noted, “It may not be perfect, but it’s the best I can do. That’s when I submit it.”

On getting the feedback on the vision for my book, I saw that the best I could do had begun to change. In fact, being at this conference had given me a slightly larger vision for my work than I had seen before. The question for me, since returning, has been how much of that new vision I will be able to realize. Certainly, after working hard on the novel for three years and four drafts, I have reached a stage with it where I’d like to go on to something else. But this new feedback is also valuable in that I can see where I can make changes and make it a slightly better book.

That is what I spent the last week doing. And the longer I think about it, the more the criticisms seem true and valuable. I had gotten so close to my work that I could no longer see it, and the comments of peers proved to be valuable.

And I do believe that I am close to the point now where I will say, with Bentz and with Espinoza, “It’s not perfect. But it’s the best I can do right now.”