Taming Perfectionism: You Spelled Progress Wrong
This article isn’t perfect, but it’s good. And it’s finished, too, which is even better.
I checked in with a client the other day…he’s also a friend, so that makes him, what, a frient? A cliend? Anyway, when I asked if he had been dealing with any roadblocks lately, he mentioned perfectionism. He said he had no problems writing the first draft, but now that he’s revising, he’s worried he’ll make the wrong change or that he’ll break one thing while fixing another.
The timing of our conversation is interesting. Here’s this pretty strong writer striving to make his story as good as possible, worrying about it being good enough, meanwhile, I had just started writing an article about whether quality even matters in self-publishing anymore (more and more, I’m seeing that maybe it doesn’t).
After a brief discussion with him, I’ve decided to pivot and share my thoughts on the perfection side of the quality coin first.
Perfectionism, the Enemy of Done
Sorry to say, but you can’t just flip off perfectionism. If you have it, you’ve probably dealt with it for years. So you won’t go to bed tonight, say you’re not a perfectionist, and boom, you wake up without it nagging at your heels.
Instead, you practice for years, and then one day you wake up and realize that, hey, I’m not the perfectionist I was before I got my shit together.
I used to be a die-hard perfectionist. I’d sit and tweak a story, a paragraph, a single line over and over to the point where I shut down and tossed the piece in the trash. I once got a personalized rejection letter that said I was in the top ten percent of all submissions, but the story wasn’t quite what they were looking for.
Did I submit it somewhere else? Nope. It wasn’t good enough, so I revised it a couple of times before giving up on it entirely. What an idiot!
Accepting Your Limitations
Since then, I’ve learned to see when I’ve reached “good enough.” I hate that phrase. Good enough. Gross. It feels like it’s always accompanied by a shrug and a “meh, whatever.” But I’ve managed to find a place where I know my limitations, and I know when I’m at the spot where any revisions I make won’t be worth the time they take.
And that’s the hard lesson here: knowing your limits and accepting them.
Can I use another sports analogy to explain writing?
I’m totally going to.
Here it is:
When I’m at the gym, I use what’s called progressive overload. It’s when you increase the intensity of the workout over time. You can increase the weight, number of reps, time under tension, etc. But I can tell you right now, I’m not walking into the gym today and grabbing 90-pound dumbbells for chest press. I’m not there yet. Probably never will be.
I can readily see my limits in the gym or on the bike, but it’s far more challenging to recognize my limits with writing. It’s even more difficult to accept those limits. I’m a better writer now than I was five years ago, but sometimes, I still waste time spinning my wheels and getting frustrated trying to stretch too far.
“Today I’m going to write for three hours.” Nope, two hours is still my limit before I start writing trash.
“I’m going to make this scene work if I have to rewrite it ten more times.” Fifteen revisions later, nope, it’s still not there.
A Real-World Example of Finishing Anyway
I have a new novella coming out soon. It’s called The Wishing Stone. If all goes well, I’ll launch a Kickstarter for it in June. (Does this count as my big reveal? If so, umm, surprise!) I spent a long time on those 30,000 words. Certainly much longer than The Influencers suggest I should have spent. It’s a solid read. I’m happy with it. But you know what? There are still two or three spots I’m not happy with.
One is story-related—the plot point doesn’t quite work the way I wanted it to—and the other is more about the writing in one particular scene. No matter how many times I rewrote that one scene, I just couldn’t get it where I wanted it. I saw in my head what I wanted to show, but it never matched my vision.
It’s absolutely the taste-talent gap Ira Glass talked about.
I know. I know. The Influencers are cringing. When talking about an upcoming release, I should never mention imperfections. I should focus only on how wonderful it is. But trust me, The Wishing Stone is good, maybe even great...it’s just not perfect.
And it never will be.
Nothing ever is.
I know my strengths and my weaknesses. I know my limits. When I write, I push those limits, improving where I can and accepting when I’m not there yet. At least, that’s the goal.
And here’s the thing: You can only get better by writing, then finishing, and then starting something new.
My Rules for Taming Perfectionism
So how do you get rid of perfectionism? All it takes is practice.
These eleven things help, too (because hey, a top ten list would’ve been too perfect):
Write. And write a lot.
Publish, even if that only means sending your piece to a few friends.
Read a lot, too. Learn to spot what works well and what doesn’t.
Accept yourself as you are. This might not come easily, but it’s a must. Like a first-time marathon runner who’s now running five miles a day instead of two, remind yourself how far you’ve come. And you’ll continue to improve if you stick with it. But if you’re not as scary as Stephen King and your world-building isn’t as strong as Patrick Rothfuss, use them as inspiration, not as a reason to give up.
Work on deadlines. Get used to writing and publishing quickly. My time as a reporter—and later as a blogger—taught me that sometimes, when you’re up against it, you just have to find a way. This is where short stories might come in handy, too.
Focus on what you can control. You can’t control whether people like your story, but you can control how you treat yourself about your current skill level, how often you sit down to write, and whether you let perfectionism slow you down.
Practice self-compassion. Handle yourself with kid gloves. It’s okay if you’re not as good as you want to be yet. Give yourself a hug and keep going.
Get over yourself. Yeah, this might feel like the opposite of compassion, but maybe a little tough love is in order. Look, whatever you’re writing isn’t going to save the human race from being overrun by our new AI overlords. The world isn’t at stake, so just finish the damn thing.
Celebrate the small stuff. Celebrate writing that crisp line of dialog and that unique detail that made a character come to life. Learn to enjoy the things you’ve done well instead of focusing on lack all the time.
Learn to handle constructive criticism, it’s there to make you a better writer.
Pursue what matters. When you write what you’re truly interested in—instead of writing what you think others want you to write—you’ll slip into your zone far more often. And writing in the zone is a wonderful thing.
Look, it’s easy to berate yourself for not being as good as you want to be. But remember, improving your writing is a process. As long as you’re writing, you’re progressing. Take it one step at a time. Keep writing. And keep publishing.
Very helpful! It's easy to be crippled by dreams of perfectionism and hard to cut yourself slack. I'll be using those eleven rules to keep my writing moving. Solid stuff!