I don't know about you, but I've always had a positive connotation with perfectionism. To me, it meant a person that would strive for the best of their ability. It meant dotting your I's, crossing your T's, and never sending an email that you haven't reread at least three times. So if perfectionism means striving for the best your work can be, then how could it possibly be bad for your writing?
Let me bring you in a bit closer, to a more intimate look at some of the more debilitating moments of my self-proclaimed perfectionism. Like four years of countless revisions of my first novel because there was always something that needed changing. Throwing out entire characters because I hit a road block in developing their personality profile. If it wasn't perfect, I threw it out. All that time, all that energy, just...gone. All the while, other authors are publishing their debut novels and mine is half-finished, collecting dust in a drawer.
Perfectionism is a sneaky and silent killer of words, because it masquerades as a positive. It's that feeling in the back of your mind that says, "you can do better." And you believe it, because why wouldn't you want to do better? But when you begin doubting every word you put down or your writing shrivels up like a dried piece of fruit, it becomes less of a cutesy little quirk and more of a dangerous threat to your very well-being.
So if you're reading this wondering if you fall into this category, I've put together a little quiz based on my personal experience:
- Your perfectionism is causing you to throw out work altogether instead of asking yourself what is wrong and how could you possibly fix it.
- Your perfectionism is causing you to stop writing because what you're coming up with is garbage anyway.
- You have had a full day of tasks but you still don't feel productive. Nothing seems to be enough to produce that feeling of accomplishment.
- You're afraid to write because you fear you won't produce anything valuable. Everyone will hate it. More importantly, YOU will hate it.
- You expect every piece of work you produce to achieve the same level of success.
If you're nodding your head at even a couple of things, it may be time to re-evaluate.
Having perfect work doesn't matter if it never sees the light of day. As Marie Forleo says, "If you wait to get it perfect, you'll never get it out there."
I was actually listening to one of her podcasts recently and she had some interesting thoughts about the show SNL. Have you ever noticed how some of their skits go viral and everyone is sharing with friends because they are so laugh-out-loud funny while others sometimes are simply....meh. The reason is because they constantly producing content. And the more content you produce, the more you're going to begin to see a contrast between your best and least-best work. And that's okay. Because with all that content production, you're learning and growing as a writer. You're figuring out what works, what audiences respond to, and what you enjoy writing! Without the act of completing your work, it's impossible to attain these things.
And this may just be a personal preference, but I would rather have a vast collection of humanly flawed work throughout my lifetime than a single perfect masterpiece.
So that leads me to this. The first step. Start by acknowledging everything you are doing well. Or heck, just acknowledge the things you're doing. Because perfectionism can make us feel like it's a crap-ton of nothing. And it's easy to feel like you've accomplished nothing when your expectations are EVERYTHING.
You're doing great, just by writing. So keep at it. The community of writers is here to help. You'll make some mistakes along the way. That's okay too. In fact, it's perfectly, perfectly okay.
That's all for today, hoppers! Thank you again for stopping by my blog and I hope to see you again next time!
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