mrgankingston:

Handling Perfectionism as a Writer

My names Morgan and I’m a perfectionist.

The first step to overcoming a problem is admitting you have one. Now all joking aside, perfectionism is something I struggle with a lot when it comes to my writing. It hinders me from moving forward some days and even worse scrapping a whole project because it’s not “perfect” at the get-go. It hit me pretty had in the last two weeks to the point where just hitting my word count was a slog because I’d have to stop, tweak what I just wrote 50 million times before moving on. It’s unhealthy I’ll admit and I work really hard to push past this on the daily. Especially since Nano is fastly approaching and Preptober in full swing I figured this might be a good time to introduce this

Now I can hear you saying “Well don’t put such pressure on yourself and you’ll be fine.” If only it were that easy. I like to set ambitious goals to push myself and challenge myself, but even I have to take a step back every now and then and realize that sometimes I’m not able to meet it  Striving to be perfect is something I unintentionally engrained into myself at an early age. Primary years in school were met with “It needs to be the best, prettiest and get the A ( 100%) always” and I would get it all done and get those A’s. But after a while, that mentality slowly carried into high school and secondary school resulting in a lot of breakdowns and other not so pleasant moments in my life. But through it all, I learned a few tricks to keep my inner perfectionist’s mouth zipped tightly as I type or work on projects like graphics or something another creative outlet like my writing.

So this is for anyone who struggles with this, students, writers, teachers, etc.  Most of these tips are for writing and writers though but I don’t see why someone can’t adopt them

1. Change colors

If you’re working on an English project or rough draft and just trying to get words to a page.  I do this a lot with all my WIPs. Every day before I start, I read the little note I’ve left myself to give me a jumping off point and everything before that note gets changed to a light grey/off-white color that I cannot read on the screen.

The reason: If I can’t see it, I can’t read it. And then I can’t go back 50 times to make sure it’s all perfect and genius in a draft.

2. Set a timer

Set a timer for 25 mins. Write or work without stopping. Then once the timer is up reset it for 5 mins. In those five mins, you may tweak or fix things of what you just worked on. After five mins take a 5 min break then repeat.

The reason:  It’s a little of both worlds. I get my writing done and I’m allowed to give in a little to the urge of fixing things. The key is after those 5 mins of editing are up. You walk away. Just do it.

Get up.

Go get water.

Pet the dogs.

Scratch the Cat.

Stretch those legs.

Then come back for 25 mins. it’s much easier if you physically get off your butt and move away, to avoid the temptation of working over those 5 mins.

3. Go on a literal walk.

This is a hard on to do, but sometimes it’s the best option. When writing or doing a project, the best medicine to defeat your inner perfectionist is to just go away, take a walk and come back in a few hours. Clear head, clear image. It’s harder to do then it sounds, it’s even harder to come back once you put it down but sometimes it can be just what the doctor ordered

The reason: Giving yourself space with some physical activity can release a burst of creative energy ( and some sciencey stuff I don’t know much about) and get you fired up again if you’ve hit a wall or get that stifling feeling this WIP isn’t perfect so why bother.

4.  Tell yourself what you’re doing/writing doesn’t count. 

It’s a Prototype/warm upSit down to write, tell yourself you’re just gonna type words and only after you hit that word count can you just delete the whole pile of crap and start fresh with the creative juices already flowing after. No one has to ever see this WIP section. No one has to know you wrote this at 5 AM on the cusp of sleep. There is no pressure for this because it doesn’t matter. Hell, you could write watermelon 500 times for all you care!

the reason: when you toss out pressure and terms that box you in you can have fun. You lose that “it has to be perfect because someone will see it and I can’t have it not perfect” mentality. You might even find that what you wrote ( unless you actually do write watermelon 500 times, no judgment I have done that too) is actually pretty good.

5. Post it/Publish it.

I just heard about 500 of you scream in horror. My inner perfectionist just about fainted. Sometimes just doing it, hitting that button and coming to terms that what you just shared with the world isn’t perfect is what you have to do. It’ll scare you and hell it scares me but just going for it helps alleviate the pressure. It’s something that you might realize get’s easier with time

The reason: Tough love. It’s the reality of the fact that you sometimes need to tell your perfectionist self to shut the fork up and hit enter.  You can’t really be perfect 100% of the time. You will make mistakes even in published work. Everyone does. There are a lot of books with a missed typo in them, I bet you’ve found them too if that proves anything it’s it’s okay to be imperfect

Which brings me too

6. Be realistic and remind yourself

You are human. You are a person. You make mistakes. It happens. The important thing is you don’t let the need to fix those mistakes ruin why you love writing or even make you not want to write. I’ve been there, a few times, and it’s awful. The point is this is something you love and despite your imperfections and your works imperfections someone is going to love it too

I hope this helps someone!!
As always if there’s anything I can touch on more let me know. Next week Is my birthday so I hope to have some awesome extra goodies up to go with that so stay tuned!!

Happy writing/creating! 
XO
Morgan