right<\/em>. \u00a0“Good enough” is almost never good enough. \u00a0When I’m working on a project, I don’t just spit it out and move on. \u00a0I obsessive over it, continuously tweaking and adjusting, as reluctant to give it up as an oyster with its pearl.<\/p>\nThis isn’t to say that I’m perfect. \u00a0It doesn’t even mean I’m necessarily good at the things I try. \u00a0It just means that when\u00a0something isn’t right, I hang on and stress over it way longer than I should.<\/p>\n
And I know that a lot of people say that they’re perfectionists when they aren’t. \u00a0Maybe I’m one of those people. \u00a0But if you ask my wife if I’m a perfectionist, she’ll probably say yes, and then point at my side of the closet.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So how does that influence my writing?<\/p>\n
For starters, it makes my writing slower. \u00a0I get hung up on\u00a0the little things. \u00a0I obsess longer than I should over things that just don’t matter.<\/p>\n
The worst thing, though, is that I have a tendency to edit while I’m still working on the first draft.<\/p>\n
On the positive side, my first drafts come out very clean. \u00a0Many people have read my first drafts and told me that they thought it was a second or third draft. \u00a0That seems good, except that all first drafts are crap, mine included. \u00a0I still need to go back and edit everything I do. \u00a0If I just waited to edit my work until the entire first draft was done, I would have greater perspective on the things that need editing, and the whole process would be faster.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I have a powerful inner editor. \u00a0It’s more like an inner demon, especially when I’m being particularly perfectionist. \u00a0Nothing healthy ever comes from being a perfectionist with a first draft. \u00a0Only unnecessary stress, and then feelings of guilt when the project is slow, and falls behind expected goals.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This is one of the reasons that NaNoWriMo is awesome. \u00a0When I participated in NaNoWriMo last year, I got behind. \u00a0The perfectionist editor inside my head kept on chattering as I was plugging along, making me go back and fix tiny things that could be fixed later. \u00a0The editor kept hounding me, deep into the month of November… and then stopped. \u00a0I reached a point where if I was going to finish the project, I had to get words on the page, no matter the quality. \u00a0NaNoWriMo forced me to abandon perfectionism, if only for a few days.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
If you are a perfectionist and you’re looking at starting a story, find a way to silence that part of you long enough to get the first draft done. \u00a0I know that it’s easier said than done. \u00a0I’ve only been able to do it a few times, but when I’ve done it, I’ve managed to finish stories. \u00a0Do whatever you need to in order to get the first draft out of your head and onto the page. \u00a0Bribe yourself. \u00a0Trick yourself. \u00a0Keep telling yourself that you can be a perfectionist on the next draft, which is the truth. \u00a0There’s time for making it perfect later.<\/p>\n
Most importantly, be kind to yourself. \u00a0I know that when I turn a\u00a0scrutinizing eye towards\u00a0myself, I can be quite vicious. \u00a0Being a perfectionist\u00a0with writing is an avenue to self torture, and it won’t make you produce work any faster, or of any higher quality. \u00a0So don’t do that.<\/p>\n
And if you know how, please share with me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To start this post, I looked for a quote about perfectionism. \u00a0I found one that’s perfect. “Perfectionism is self-abuse of the highest order.” —\u00a0Anne Wilson Schaef I’m a little bit of a perfectionist, and a teeny-tiny bit obsessive-compulsive. \u00a0I’m\u00a0also probably a little bit bipolar, but that’s a (painful) topic for another post. So when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":463,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions\/463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}