Try Your Hardest, Then Let It Go

I’m reading Bossypants by Tina Fey. It’s hilarious, but also includes some useful lessons and anecdotes about life as a writer.

On page 123, Fey writes about “Things I Learned from Lorne Michaels.” (In case you don’t know, Lorne Michaels is the creator and producer of Saturday Night Live. He is the guy who hired Tina Fey for SNL and later helped her start 30 Rock.)

Anyway, here’s the second lesson Fey learned from Michaels:

“The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30.”

This is something Lorne has said often about Saturday Night Live, but I think it’s a great lesson about not being too precious about your writing. You have to try your hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke you can until the last possible second, and then you have to let it go.

You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the water-slide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute. (And I’m from a generation where a lot of people died on water-slides, so this was an important lesson for me to learn.) You have to let people see what you wrote. It will never be perfect, but perfect is overrated. Perfect is boring on live TV.

When it comes to writing for a living, there is no such thing as perfection: only deadlines and results.

If you are a comedy writer (like Tina Fey), the audience either laughs at your jokes or they don’t.

If you are a direct response copywriter (like me), the market either responds to your sales letter or they don’t.

So forget about perfection.

Just do the best work you can possibly do in the limited time you have.

Then sit back, relax, and see what happens when you let go of your writing and let it do its thing.

-Ryan M. Healy