7 votes

Do you have any advice for me to overcome perfectionism as a writer?

I'm asking specifically about writing fiction.

I need to write a lot in a short time. I'm a perfectionist -- a therapist once called me obsessive. Sometimes I spend hours on just a few paragraphs. I eventually make good paragraphs but that is not very productive. Deadlines fly by, I become anxious and stressed. I wish to write more, even if it's not as good. Better to have something to edit and correct than nothing at all.

I reckon that a book is not made of 100% perfect phrases. At some point you gotta lift the house, even it is not as pretty as you want. I want to experiment with writing more freely, finding ways to overcome my self-criticism and impostor syndrome. I see people writing 3000 words a day... maybe I don't need to write that much, but I envy them. I often don't write more than 500 words per day. This is just not working for me as a professional writer.

Maybe I could try something like stream of consciousness. But I don't know. Looking for advice. Not necessarily on literary techniques, but also on how to put myself in a position to avoid self-recrimination, let things flow a bit more. I'm looking for a better psychological outlook. Right now I edit my stuff so aggressively that I transform pages into tweets.

8 comments

  1. [2]
    teaearlgraycold
    Link
    I would recommend exposure therapy. Write a bunch of mediocre content, recognize it as such, and release it anyway. Keep doing that until you’re okay producing work below your capabilities. You’ll...

    I would recommend exposure therapy. Write a bunch of mediocre content, recognize it as such, and release it anyway. Keep doing that until you’re okay producing work below your capabilities.

    You’ll still have your skills, but will have learned a new one as well.

    5 votes
    1. psi
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      Ira Glass captured this sentiment nicely.

      Ira Glass captured this sentiment nicely.

      [What] nobody tells people who are beginners—and I really wish somebody had told this to me—is that all of us who do creative work … we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste—the thing that got you into the game—your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean?

      A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people at that point, they quit. And the thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be—they knew it fell short, it didn’t have the special thing that we wanted it to have.

      And the thing I would say to you is everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase—you gotta know it’s totally normal.

      And the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work—do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week, or every month, you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions. It takes a while, it’s gonna take you a while—it’s normal to take a while. And you just have to fight your way through that, okay?

      5 votes
  2. nacho
    Link
    Never stop to think of the perfect word or phrase. Write down the different phrases you're contemplating and move on. Go back later to refine your first draft. Everyone I know who are slow at...

    Never stop to think of the perfect word or phrase. Write down the different phrases you're contemplating and move on.

    Go back later to refine your first draft. Everyone I know who are slow at writing sit and think too much, write too little and don't write enough drafts because they want the first/second/third draft to be the final product. It takes a lot longer to write few drafts, than iterating through many drafts.

    Save each draft. Start each draft fresh so you have all the previous iterations to consider before landing on a final draft.


    Never ever use a dictionary or look things up during a first draft. That's not a first draft.

    Never delete something in a first draft. That's not a first draft. So many people struggle writing because they don't actually write the things going through their heads, or they delete the things they've written right afterwards.

    Have a plan for each draft and do only things related to that narrow plan for that one read-through, or immediate thoughts you get then and there that you simply write down without considering further.

    Writing isn't about writing, it's about putting together thoughts, scenes and elements, tying them all together bit by bit, draft by draft.


    Never do anything else when you write. No music, no phone notifications etc.

    4 votes
  3. knocklessmonster
    Link
    Two ideas: Hard deadlines. If something must be done at a set time, you have to send it in at some point, and can't keep editing it forever. I slowly stopped making music because I didn't have...

    Two ideas:

    Hard deadlines. If something must be done at a set time, you have to send it in at some point, and can't keep editing it forever. I slowly stopped making music because I didn't have these and would tinker with a piece of music because I could just play with it forever without having to shape it into anything. When I have a huge paper, I have to set up enough time to proofread it, but time it so my last proofread is the day before it's due so I can give it a once-over if I'm just not feeling it that day. Use the stress of a deadline to guide you to meet the deadline, at least provided it's not the sort of stress that's crushing, or to the point you can't think at all. I find just working on the goal removes some of the stress of the approaching deadline.

    A form where perfection is not good. Stream of consciousness writing is a good example. To tie into my music example: Algorave (alorithmically generated music created in real time) and improvisation (with a guitar, ukulele, whatever) are great for me because if I do a thing the entire point is what was done in real time, and being a perfectionist would undermine the ultimate goal of live performance.

    If you're cutting a page down to a tweet it means one of two things: What remains of the page is referring to stuff in your head, or you've got too much fluff, and I seriously doubt it's the latter.

    4 votes
  4. Staross
    Link
    The other issue is that you want the overall composition and pacing to be right, and it's very hard to do that by focusing too much on the details. It's like drawing a human figure ; you start by...

    I reckon that a book is not made of 100% perfect phrases.

    The other issue is that you want the overall composition and pacing to be right, and it's very hard to do that by focusing too much on the details. It's like drawing a human figure ; you start by sketching the pose and proportions and then you go on refining the shapes and volumes, and then you fill in the details, and then you ink it, etc. If you start drawing the eye in full details, by the time you are at the neck your figure looks like Quasimodo. In a way your not a perfectionist at all, because you don't even use a good method. If you want perfection you've got to improve on that (I'm trying to appeal to the perfectionist in you, but maybe it's not the best idea...).

    2 votes
  5. petrichor
    Link
    I write similarly. The Pomodoro Technique works well for me, at the expense of not enjoying the writing as much. You set a twenty-five minute timer, pledge to do nothing more than write or stare...

    I write similarly. The Pomodoro Technique works well for me, at the expense of not enjoying the writing as much. You set a twenty-five minute timer, pledge to do nothing more than write or stare at an empty canvas until the time is up, and rinse and repeat.

    Editing while writing is harder to work around. Two things help me: pressure (imposed due dates or progress checks) and focus (by which I mean, where my eyes are focusing on the page). Being under time pressure really helps me get all my ideas down on paper in some fashion - even if it's "this character ends up in this building". Forcing myself to only look at or consider the sentence currently being written helps stops me from spending too much time thinking about what's been written.

    That's just what works for me, though - writing is such a personal thing that it's hard to give advice.

    2 votes
  6. Apos
    Link
    Brandon Sanderson gives a lot of tips on his YouTube channel. For example: How to Write a 100K Words a Year. One quote from that video (2:06):

    Brandon Sanderson gives a lot of tips on his YouTube channel. For example: How to Write a 100K Words a Year.

    One quote from that video (2:06):

    One of the problems that you run into if you're focusing on each word is you aren't good enough yet to focus on each word.

    1 vote
  7. Grzmot
    Link
    Get rid of distractions. If you don't have the mental strength (I don't), use something like Cold Turkey to block 'em, or their Writer app to alternatively just dumb your honestly way too smart...

    Get rid of distractions. If you don't have the mental strength (I don't), use something like Cold Turkey to block 'em, or their Writer app to alternatively just dumb your honestly way too smart computer down into a typewriter. You'd be amazed on how much that helps.

    The only other advice I can give you is to just write. Accept that it may be mediocre (ask for feedback from other folks) and just press on. You will get better with time, and the only time you'll realize it is when you read the shit you wrote ages ago and compare it to now. If you're writing stories, think up a bullet point plot thread of what happens, so when you write you don't to think too hard about where to go and how to get there, but how to express it. In this way you have way more mental capabilities to think of things like worldbuilding, nice wording or callbacks to earlier things.