In Search of Impossible Goodness© by Holly Lisle
All Rights Reserved
To the best of my knowledge and remembrance, I have never before
found inspiration for my writing in the work of a corporate entity.
Which only goes to show that nothing is impossible. This is the
story of how I found Impossible Goodness -- the highest level of
success -- in a most unlikely place, as well as an exploration of
how we define the level of success we achieve, in writing and elsewhere,
by our expectations and our daily choices.
In every aspect of life, we see other people in the act of doing
things right, and from our interactions with them, we develop our
own feel for how we can do things right ourselves -- we build templates
for our personal lives, our work lives, our goals, and our writing.
I'm not going to address the examples we get from those who do
things wrong. We gain valuable experiences in dealing with everything
from unpleasant incompetence to complete failure. But it is in our
dealings with success that we stand the most chance of either emulating
compromise or reaching for excellence -- so I'd like to look at
the three levels of success, and what each of them means to us.
I define the three levels of success as:
- Professional & Competent
- Excellent & Surprising
- Impossibly Good
In academic terms, all three of these conditions would look the
same; they would all be "A"-level work. This provides another example
of how the real world and the academic world have little connection.
Because in real terms, these three levels of success are light years
apart.
Back in 1993, I bought a Micron computer. It was a good computer
-- so good, in fact, that it only reached retirement this year,
in spite of being seriously obsolete a few years before that. It
did what I needed it to do. I had some problems with it initially,
waited on the usual tech phone lines, got the usual mix of helpful,
knowledgeable techs and evil spawn-of-Satan techs. The product was
solid, however, and I eventually got everything working the way
it should with only a moderate financial outlay and delays I found
tolerable. Everything about Micron was good enough. Not breathtaking,
not wonderful -- but I'd own another Micron. My experience with
Micron lets me classify them as Professional & Competent.
Professional & Competent is getting the job done to the
level that any other professional, facing the same financial and
time constraints that you face, would manage. Professional &
Competent work will keep you in business year in and year out --
you'll win customers, readers, etc., at a faster rate than you'll
lose them. It's good enough.
The same year, I bought a laptop from Sager. I was doing a lot
of convention and conference appearances at the time, and wanted
to be able to work on the road. The Sager folks were great, and
when I developed a system problem that they couldn't resolve over
the phone, I sent the system in, and got it back improved. Along
with the required work, they did a couple of upgrades for free.
I paid my own shipping to them, but they covered the shipping back,
they did the repairs in less time than the estimate that they gave
me, and they were prompt, universally courteous. Along with having
a good product, they threw in added value.
I found Sager Excellent & Surprising.
Excellent & Surprising is going beyond what you have to
do -- adding a bit of yourself, a little more than what was asked
for or even required, simply because you care about the quality
of what you do. Excellent & Surprising work will win you
some awards, gain you some really ecstatic fans, and allow you to
stand above the crowd of qualified professionals as being better.
And then we come to Impossibly Good. I always considered the existence
of an Impossibly Good tech company . . . well, impossible. I considered
Impossible Goodness something only attainable within the realm of
individual achievement, and utterly beyond the reach of the bureaucracies
of corporate culture.
Then my Visor Deluxe developed a strange hardware glitch. With
the usual fear and loathing that any technophile feels when facing
the prospect of telephone tech support ("This is going to be expensive",
"This is going to take FOREVER", "How long WILL I have to listen
to 'Your call is important to us; please stay on the line'?") I
got the tech support number from the Handspring website, double-checked
the FAQs to make sure I wasn't overlooking anything obvious. And
then I called. Braced myself for twenty minutes of Muzak Vivaldi.
And was talking with a real live person inside of a minute.
Now here's where we leave the realm of the excellent and move
into the realm of the too-good-to-be-believed. I've stated elsewhere
that I
think the Handspring Visor is the best PDA on the market. Not
just best-for-price, but best. But when I called, and explained
my problem, and the tech listened to my description of what was
going wrong, I got the first huge shock of my technophile life.
"Okay," she said, "that sounds like a hardware problem. Here are
the steps to take to see if it's fixable." She gave me about three
steps. "If that doesn't work, call back, and we'll replace it for
free."
Huh? I am rarely speechless. I do words for a living, and I have
a large supply in stock. But -- what? I was prepared to spend money
to get my Visor fixed; I write books, web articles, my daily to-do
list, and poetry on it, as well as brainstorming proposals and new
projects on the thing. I keep my character, location, and language
databases there. Being without it is like being without the most
convenient part of my brain. Paying to get it fixed was entirely
within what I considered to be reasonable business. But they were
willing to send me a free one?
Second shock coming. I took the steps, my problems did not go away,
and I called back. The new tech looked up my customer number, said,
"Sure. I'm sorry for any inconvenience. We'll send you a free one
right away; just save the box and send us your broken one in it."
He got my address, gave me a confirmation number, and said, "If
your new one isn't there by Friday, call us back with this confirmation
number and we'll take care of it." Just like that. They were sending
me a free one, and they hadn't even asked to see my old one first.
(Yes -- I had to give them a credit card number. If you don't return
the old one, you _WILL_ pay for the new one. They aren't insane,
after all. Just Impossibly Good.)
Third and forth shocks. The replacement Visor (in my same beautiful
happy, sunshiny orange, no less) arrived the day after I talked
with the second tech. Overnight Fedex. With it came paid return
Fedex postage. All I had to do was put my old Visor in the box and
tape it shut, and drop it off at Fedex. Not only was the replacement
Visor free, but so was shipping. BOTH ways.
Impossible Goodness. It's what you would do if you had no time
limits, no financial constraints, no one to tell you that you had
to meet certain quotas, or fulfill corporate obligations.
Somehow . . . somehow . . . in a world where all of these things
exist, Handspring still manages Impossible Goodness.
So how does this apply to your writing?
You can have a solid, long-term career being Professional &
Competent. Most of the writers on the shelves who have been there
for ten years or better fall into this range. You like their work,
you know that every time you buy one of their books, it will meet
most, if not all of your expectations. They don't offer a lot of
surprises from book to book, but they don't offer a lot of disappointments,
either. They offer good value for money.
You can be a Professional & Competent, but to do so,
you will have to accept the following compromises:
- I will do the best I can given the time I have.
- I will turn in a solid, fully developed story each time,
but will do only what I have to do to make it so -- I will not
expend extra time or effort on an already-acceptable book when
I could be using that same time or effort to develop a new book.
- I will focus on my bottom line, and will accept the fact
that not all readers will stay with me -- I will satisfy myself
with gaining new readers, but losing old ones.
- I will accept writing at my current level for the rest of
my career.
You can -- if you're willing to put not just more of your time,
but also a part of yourself into each book -- add the extra passion
and magic that will move you into the realm of the Excellent &
Surprising. In that realm, you'll be in some breathtaking company.
J.K. Rowling writes there, and so does Stephen King, and so does
Dean Koontz. Each of these writers brings something extra to their
work that you cannot find elsewhere, and they've reaped significant
rewards for doing so.
Being Excellent & Surprising takes more commitment.
You have to give yourself the following challenges, and strive with
each book to meet them.
- I will improve in some way with each story.
- I will reach inside myself and my life and add something
from me to each work.
- I will, with every project, strive to give more than I have
been paid to give.
- Knowing that every writer loses readers, I will still make
it my goal to keep and satisfy every one.
Excellent & Surprising writers face the same challenges as
Professional & Competent ones -- deadlines, money problems,
readers who come and go. But word of mouth and dedication will keep
more of their old readers, will help them carry readers through
one or several books where they attempt to do something better but
fail, and will bring them new readers at a steady rate, because
they are always fighting to be better. Everyone, unfortunately,
writes books that some readers don't like. Everyone occasionally
flops. But the Excellent and Surprising writer will weather those
flops better than the Professional & Competent one.
Finally, Impossible Goodness can be the goal upon which
you set your sights.
The only way to reach Impossible Goodness is to refuse to be
stymied by the obstacles of real life. Live in the realm of the
Excellent & Surprising, strive always to be better, to learn
more, to challenge your own expectations as much as your readers,
and you may find when you have finished that one of your stories,
or several, or many, have transcended the realm of the Excellent
& Surprising, and have touched Impossible Goodness. Impossible
Goodness takes constant commitment, no small degree of faith, and
just a touch of grace.
You cannot live at this heights forever, but like Mary Lou Retton
with her string of perfect tens, like Theodore Sturgeon with Godbody
and Slow Sculpture and The Dreaming Jewels, and, weirdly
enough, like Handspring with product development and now, with customer
service, you can hit these heights for a moment, and in doing so
change the way that people see the world that surrounds them, and
the way they understand the possibilities that exist within that
world. You'll raise the bar by proving that what seemed impossible
wasn't, at least for one brief, shining moment. And you'll leave
a star behind you to guide and inspire the next traveler who shares
the path that you have traveled.
Quiz -- Are You Right for Writing?>>
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