Handling Perfectionism

by Elizabeth Spann Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’m a very type-A person, but I feel very fortunate not to be a perfectionist.

However…I’m married to a perfectionist. And both of my kids are perfectionists. Every time I see them struggle with it, it reminds me just how fortunate I am.  I’ve seen my husband, an excellent writer himself, wordsmith emails into the ground. There’s rarely an email I spend longer than 5 or 6 minutes on. I can’t completely relate, but I do sympathize.

If you’re someone who struggles with maintaining forward motion in your writing, here are a few ideas you could consider trying:

Don’t read your manuscript until the first draft is done. I know this can be hard, but I try never to do it. That’s mostly because it rips me completely out of right-brain creative mode and directly into left-brain editing mode. For a perfectionist, it could be tough to move forward when you see the mistakes or rough writing in your first draft.

Set shorter writing sessions. I mainly work in short sprints, which keeps me focused on the immediate task at hand: getting through the next couple of pages as quickly as possible. If you’d like to log-in to some live sprints with other writers, try subscribing to different AuthorTube writers. 

Focus perfectionism on other aspects of the story…editing is a great choice. There are definitely times when being a perfectionist comes in handy. I appreciate having book editors who are perfectionists. They fix my typos and other mistakes. Tell yourself your wordsmithing can come later.

Use lists to keep yourself on track. I love lists. And I think perfectionists do, too. To stay focused on moving forward, a short list for every writing day can help. Something as basic as “write description of Sally” or “Jim talks to Lee about the strange call he got” works fine.

Call it what it is. It’s perfectionism. It’s not that your story is bad.  K.M. Weiland has a great post where she talks about the benefits of “professionalism” over “perfectionism.”

Remember self-care and be forgiving to yourself.  Self-care is probably the easiest thing for writers to skip when faced with a big to-do list and family obligations. But it’s incredibly important to at least remember the basics: stretch, hydrate, get enough sleep, and exercise. And remember to be kind to yourself. I always try to remember the advice to talk to yourself as you’d speak to a friend. Writer Colleen M. Story encourages writers to include a number of self-care activities and routines in a day, instead of just ticking self-care off the list after doing one thing for themselves.

Do you struggle with perfectionism? How do you deal with it?

Photo credit: CEThompson on VisualHunt / CC BY-NC-ND