Some Words On Satisfaction From W. Somerset Maugham

In the foreword to Of Human Bondage I found some words from Maugham which seem to sum up the writer's predicament:

Though authors are touchy about their productions and inclined to resent unfavourable criticism they are seldom self-satisfied. They are conscious how far the work on which they have spent much time and trouble comes short of their conception, and when they consider it are much more vexed with their failure to express this in its completeness than pleased with the passages here and there that they can regard with complacency. Their aim is perfection and they are wretchedly aware that they have not attained it.


We strive for an excellence we'll never achieve but where do you draw the line? When do you give up on perfecting something and settle for what it actually is on the page? Anybody who's serious about their craft knows that the first draft contains a myriad of errors. You have to resolve these to your satisfaction. But then you may think that your second draft is as incomplete as your first. So you try it again and again. You could spend your life trying to perfect one manuscript but if you manage to get it up to your exacting standards on one draft you'll become disillusioned with it on the next.

You have to let go. I'm terrible at this. I have two manuscripts I've redrafted four times apiece. I'll concede that they are a lot more coherent and structured than they were in the first draft. I'll admit they make me smile, want to cry and also ache in appropriate sections. My characters are much more rounded and realistic than when I first started and, for the most part, I think they sound more individual too. Yet I'm still not happy. I'll never be happy. I want to rework them a million times. If I allow myself that luxury there's no chance they'll see the light of day.

A good way of fighting this is passing your writing onto other people who will give you relatively honest criticism. If you let go long enough to allow one person to take a peek then you might be ready to face the hurdle of submission. I'm almost there. Actually, I am there. Maugham reminded me that absolute perfection is unattainable and you have to compromise with yourself sometimes.

Who's The Guy With The Bald Head?

Last week the theory popped up that by 2090 Winston Churchill probably won’t be recognisable by his picture.

At first this seemed ludicrous. It’s Winston Churchill!

But the more I thought about it the more I conceded it was a probability. His deeds will have passed out of living memory by then, of course. The people just coming to the end of their lives won’t be the people who grew up hearing about him from their grandparents. 155 years after the end of World War II it may be almost forgotten. After all, we see pictures of all sorts of people in history classes at school – Custer, Shakespeare, Marx – and how many of those would we remember outside of the classroom? When I think of General Custer I vaguely remember a plumpish man, possibly with a moustache, but almost every man in that textbook looked similar.

If the time comes when people do look at a picture of Winston Churchill and not recognise him what does that mean? One theory is that the things he did for our country have slipped through the cracks but that isn’t really the case. He’ll still be documented in text books; his contribution won’t be forgotten, although it will be observed from a distance in the way we look at, say, Darwin now. Generally, we don’t underestimate his significance but we have the clarity of time to help us look at him objectively.

And what about authors? I think looking at them rather proves the point. How many Victorian writers would your average reader recognise?

Dickens? I can almost get him. Emily Bronte? I could but most people probably couldn't. George Eliot? Well, wouldn’t a lot of people be expecting a beard?

The point is that even if we can’t remember the faces of our literary heritage we can still enjoy their works and we know who they are from the mere mention of a title – Great Expectations, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch. If someone mentions Churchill and WWII perhaps in 2090 the average person will still know what they’re talking about.

Hopefully.