Perfectionism Strikes Again

I met with a client recently who was struggling mightily to write. He could hardly produce anything at all. He would write a sentence and then delete it and then write another sentence and then delete that one. He was incredibly frustrated that it took him two hours to create just one paragraph.

His honesty moved me. It takes courage to admit our struggles, especially our writing struggles. Somehow we think others can write effortlessly, while we must be wrong in some way: not our process—us, fundamentally.

If you find yourself in this story, please know it is not about you, as a person. Your process does not support what you need. Perfectionism loves to strike at us this way, coming in sneakily through the cracks. For my client, as for many of us writers, perfectionism appears in the guise of our editing mode, prodding us to delete anything that doesn’t sound just right.

But here’s the problem, as my client discovered painfully: if you keep deleting what you write, you’ll never produce anything. What to do instead? The answer is simple: stay in ideation mode. Don’t switch back and forth between ideating and editing. Let the ideas roll! Wait until you’ve got a complete, solid draft before you begin any editing work whatsoever.

But, I can hear you ask, how do I stay out of editing mode? Well, friends, you have many options. Here are some my favorites:

• When you feel the urge to edit, pull that fi

  nger away from the delete key. Just don’t do it. Keep those fingers on the alphabetical keys! It’s gonna feel weird. You might hate it. But it’s so important.

• Lean into the roughness. We writers call this “the shi**y first draft” mode. Embrace the badness of your writing until you’ve fleshed out the bulk of what you want to say. In fact, if it helps, set your goal to make your draft as terrible as possible. Because I promise you, it’s not gonna be that bad.

• Understand your writing resistance. When your editing mode comes online too early, it’s a sure sign you fear being judged, deemed “not good enough” by some imagined critic. Your early editor mode is trying to protect you, and it’s on a noble mission. But it’s not the right time to be on that mission when you’re just trying to get stuff onto a page. So don’t let that inner critic come online just yet.

• If you need a way to add your way around that inner credit, or a few to be silenced, try shaking things up with your writing process:

  • Dictate into your phone and capture it in an iNote.

  • Sit down with a friend and tell them about your work in progress. Ask if you can voice-record your conversation so you can mine it later for gems.

  • Imagine you’re being interviewed for a podcast (like I just was!) about your work. Record it on your phone and have AI transcribe it for you.  

  • Go to a coffee shop, taking your laptop with you, and feed off the positive energy in the room, the body doubling, the hustle and bustle around you, and the fact that you’re not having to think about doing your laundry or tidying your desk.

Whether you choose something on this list, or come up with your own ideas, I guarantee you’re going to write a heck of a lot more when you can send your editor mode on vacation and just roll around in ideation. You might even have some fun!

Image created with Google Gemini.