#30: DEALING WITH PERFECTIONISM AS A WRITER

Tomi Morrison is a renowned writer. In fact, her writing prowess led her to getting a Pulitzer price in 1988 and a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

She's achieved feats that any writer would love to achieve. But inasmuch as all writers want to achieve feats like hers, sometimes this fear doesn't let us (myself inclusive) be at ease.

The fear of writing something not good creeps the hell out of us, making us doubt our capabilities.

We become obsessed with every sentence

we write; the sentence structure, punctuation and everything that has to do with the piece we are writing.

Undeniably, we all want to write captivating prose, but amidst this desire to do so, we ought to understand that there's always going to be this spirit called perfectionism lurking at the corner trying to haunt us down.

Well, chasing perfection is good, however, it is paralyzing if approached wrongly. In fact, it can be the ultimate enemy of progress if given too much relevance.

As Micheal Law brilliantly put it,

“...perfectionism isn’t really about a deep love of being meticulous. It’s about fear. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of disappointing others. Fear of failure. Fear of success.”

It's this fear that makes us overly obsessed with the details of our work. Not because we lack talent or creativity, but because we tend to never get satisfied with the outcome of what we've written even if it's the best.

HERE'S THE UNDERLYING TRUTH...

Being a perfectionist is suffocating sometimes. - Nathaniel Drew

I can't recall the amount of time I spent concerned about not messing up this article you're reading.

Here's what the writing process look like; write, erase, write again, erase, get tired, dump

the work, and then come back to it again.

I understand that I'm worried because I want to write something worthwhile. 

Something that'll captivate you and also be of great value—that's me being obsessed.

But we all have to realize that good writing is bad writing that's been rewritten several times. That's just it. One would write a piece of trash first, afterwards the person will edit, edit and edit again. 

Of course, that's what brings out the brilliance in any prose.

Amidst all this, the question is, where should one draw the line? 

Perfectionism is a moving target. - Susan Fletcher

The more you try to attain perfection, the more you keep doing it again and again. You see, despite I wrote this piece a couple of times, I'm still not satisfied. I'm not okay with it. To a great extent, I feel it's bad writing. I feel I can still do better (and yes, I could still do better).

Inasmuch as perfectionism pushes one to write diligently, and brings out the brilliance in a person's prose, the question is, how can we find peace and accept our work after doing our best?

Are we to keep digging into the nitty-gritty details after doing all that we can or are we to stop at some extent after doing our best and just say hey, fuck it! I'm done! Or what?

There is nothing wrong with wanting well-rounded and excellently written prose, but we have to stop at some point after doing our best.

We have to stop beating ourselves around, and let go of uncertainties after doing our best.

Just as Erich Fromm, a renowned German social psychologist noted, “Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties," that's how we have to spark the fuel of our creativity and at the same time let go of our uncertainties by doing our best and leaving the rest afterwards without doubting our capabilities.