Professionalism vs. Perfectionism
First off, thanks to everyone for the very kind comments on my last post. They meant a lot to me & I really appreciate how wonderful & supportive & understanding the writing community is.
Today I'm back at my revision, feeling all the twitchy, nervous irritation at imperfections. I look at all the post-its covering my manuscript, the notes scribbled in the margins and the foot-notes left in my documents and want to tear my hair out. How am I supposed to get all this done? It's too much, too big! Look at all these problems...
But while I was doing dishes I realized something... I'm being a perfectionist. Yes, I can see all these problems and I want to fix ALL THE THINGS. RIGHT NOW. Or better yet, YESTERDAY!
Um... Did I mention I'm only on my second draft of this piece?
I wanted this draft to be a better second draft than I usually write-- no, an awesome second draft! And without really admitting it to myself, what I was hoping to do was make it near-perfect.
Which is just silly. I was psyching myself out without knowing it, making it seem like I had to fix everything right off. I mean, if I could see the problems, why couldn't I just fix them?
Well, because writing doesn't quite work like that. Few things do, actually. Knowing what the problem is in the first place is a huge part of the battle, and the fact that I'd conquered that for a significant portion of the book should have been something I was celebrating. Instead, it just fueled my crazy need to make the second draft amazing.
What I actually need to do is let it go. Perfectionism doesn't get the book finished. Perfectionism doesn't even get a chapter finished. It makes me rewrite a sentence ten, fifteen times, taking a word out, putting it back in, moving a comma, then deleting the whole paragraph.
I'm an over-writer, so my second draft has to be a hack-and-slash or I'll waste time perfecting words that will just be cut. For some reason I thought I could tackle everything that needs fixing in this particular draft, and I can't. That's not how I write.
So instead of perfection, I'm going for professional-- realizing that I have do things the way I need to, in order to get a great finished product. And it might take me more drafts than I want it to (ACCURSED certainly did!), but I'm a better reviser (revisionist?) than I was this time last year, and I know what needs fixed.
So bring on draft two, draft three, draft four. I'm going to make DARLINGTON (title might be changing...) an awesome book, no matter how many times I have to go through it.
Today I'm back at my revision, feeling all the twitchy, nervous irritation at imperfections. I look at all the post-its covering my manuscript, the notes scribbled in the margins and the foot-notes left in my documents and want to tear my hair out. How am I supposed to get all this done? It's too much, too big! Look at all these problems...
But while I was doing dishes I realized something... I'm being a perfectionist. Yes, I can see all these problems and I want to fix ALL THE THINGS. RIGHT NOW. Or better yet, YESTERDAY!
Um... Did I mention I'm only on my second draft of this piece?
I wanted this draft to be a better second draft than I usually write-- no, an awesome second draft! And without really admitting it to myself, what I was hoping to do was make it near-perfect.
Which is just silly. I was psyching myself out without knowing it, making it seem like I had to fix everything right off. I mean, if I could see the problems, why couldn't I just fix them?
Well, because writing doesn't quite work like that. Few things do, actually. Knowing what the problem is in the first place is a huge part of the battle, and the fact that I'd conquered that for a significant portion of the book should have been something I was celebrating. Instead, it just fueled my crazy need to make the second draft amazing.
What I actually need to do is let it go. Perfectionism doesn't get the book finished. Perfectionism doesn't even get a chapter finished. It makes me rewrite a sentence ten, fifteen times, taking a word out, putting it back in, moving a comma, then deleting the whole paragraph.
I'm an over-writer, so my second draft has to be a hack-and-slash or I'll waste time perfecting words that will just be cut. For some reason I thought I could tackle everything that needs fixing in this particular draft, and I can't. That's not how I write.
So instead of perfection, I'm going for professional-- realizing that I have do things the way I need to, in order to get a great finished product. And it might take me more drafts than I want it to (ACCURSED certainly did!), but I'm a better reviser (revisionist?) than I was this time last year, and I know what needs fixed.
So bring on draft two, draft three, draft four. I'm going to make DARLINGTON (title might be changing...) an awesome book, no matter how many times I have to go through it.