Work with Words

Tag: perfectionism

  • When is your writing NOT ready?

    A quote from Ursula K. Le Guin: "Group criticism is great training for self-criticism. But until quite recently no writer had that raining, and yet they learned what they needed. They learned it by doing it."

    Last week, a reader posted a thoughtful question on my blog:

    How do you know when a piece of copy is ready to send off? I think this is one of the hardest challenges as a writer. Interesting point about perfectionism and editing/writing. I am one of those, and obsessive. The thing is a piece can always be improved, I think. So how does one know?

    Since I’m trying to be a hospitable blogger, I set time aside to write a thoughtful reply. However, when I sat down to share those thoughts, another question came out instead:

    How does one know a piece is NOT ready?

    I know it’s annoying to answer a question with another question, but I’m not trying to be cheeky. (Or not just.)

    In my new workbook, I suggest that there’s a subtle difference between affirmation and validation. One is good. The other not so much. And unfortunately, many writers—myself included—are drawn to the wrong one.

    When we ask our readers to affirm what we’ve written, we’re asking them, “Can you see what I see when you look at the world?” It’s like catching sight of something wonderful up in the skinny branches of a tree. “Look!” we say and point. Our readers squint upwards in response. If we’ve pointed well, they see it too.

    Validation, on the other hand, asks another question: “What should I see when I look at the world?” We think we’ve seen something. But we’re not sure. So we ask others what they see and quickly parrot their words back at them. It doesn’t matter if we actually see what they’ve seen. Like little children, we’ll nod a little too eagerly, driven by our desire for acceptance.

    But YOU are the writer. YOU get to decide what you’ve seen and what you want to say about it. You and ONLY you.

    That might sound strange coming from an editor. Don’t people pay me to tell them what’s not working in their writing? Well, yes. And no.

    A good editor doesn’t recast an author’s vision or take over the author’s voice. Their job, rather, is to help the author discover the height of their power. They strive to look at things from the author’s perspective so they can help them hone their ability to point out what they’ve seen. Even if (as sometimes happens) they see something entirely different.

    And here’s the best thing about all this: as Ursula K. Le Guin says in the quote above, you don’t need anyone’s permission—not even an editor’s—to own your voice.

    Sure, feedback can be encouraging and give you a little boost of confidence. But if you really want to become a confident writer, all you have to do is write, write, and write. Do that, day in and day out, and you’ll eventually be your own best editor.

  • Celebrate Your False Starts

    Paul holding an index card that reads: "Your history of false starts is IRRELEVANT."

    Do a lot of perfectionists become writers or is writing just an inherently perfectionistic task?

    There’s probably not a scientifically-sound answer to that question. But I’ve seen a lot of people slam into a metaphorical wall thanks to maladaptive perfectionism.

    Sometimes that looks like endless editing. You’ve probably met this writer before. They’re steadily revising draft #39 of their novel. They hope it’ll be ready to share when they’ve completed draft #42. Yet everyone knows that it’ll take a miracle for their book to ever see the light of day.

    Other times, it keeps people from writing at all. I feel the most sadness when I think of these writers. Many of them were scarred by disillusioned teachers: the kind who thoughtlessly scrawled “C+” on creative writing essays, probably annoyed that they were grading papers instead of mentoring the next David Foster Wallace.

    The running theme here is shame. That’s the feeling overwhelming both types of writers, even as they protest otherwise.

    And hey: I get it. I’ve been there too. Which is why I love this reframe from Katherine Morgan Schafler (in The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control):

    Your history of false starts is not evidence that your capacity to heal, grow, and thrive is static. Your history of false starts is irrelevant—I don’t care about it and neither should you. Allow your history of long and winding false starts to represent your abiding commitment to discover your authentic self.

    Schafler isn’t addressing writers here, but man, is this passage pertinent to what we do. What is writing if not the habit of starting over, again and again?

    Perhaps you have an idea for a story. In your head, it’s AMAZING. The mere thought gives you goosebumps. And yet every time you try to put your vision into words, you’re disillusioned after a mere five minutes. Sighs turn into groans. Groans turn into crumpled sheets of paper (or whatever the digital equivalent is). After a while you move on, and another idea bites the dust.

    But what if we applied Schafler’s reframe to that scenario?

    Okay, so your first stab didn’t capture the ephemeral magic you were expecting. That’s frustrating. However, before you toss that idea onto the dunghill, pause for a second. Put your expectations aside and read what you wrote. Then ask yourself: “What have I found here?”

    We rarely show up to ourselves with this kind of generous, nonjudgmental curiosity. When we look at what we’ve written, all we see are the flaws. All we hear are our critics’ voices, telling us why we suck and wondering why we ever thought we had any talent to begin with. And for some reason, we trust those nasty voices more than we trust ourselves.

    Schafler is bang on: “I don’t care about [your history of false starts] and neither should you.” Anyone who DOES care about them shouldn’t be someone you listen to, full stop. (There’s a good chance they actually don’t want you to be a writer.)

    I don’t know about you, but January often feels like a month defined by false starts. Whether you make New Year’s Resolutions or not. It’s another clean slate marred by misshapen letters and pictures that fail to live up to the pictures in our heads.

    What Schafler invites us to consider is this: what if the misshapen disappointments are immensely more valuable than the “perfect” results that vaguely live in our heads?

    What if indeed.

  • The High Stakes of Writer’s Block

    Paul holding an index card that reads: "Saying words out loud changes something."

    When we have trouble writing, the words are never the problem.

    I learned this lesson the hard way as a part-time grad student. For my final paper, I had the perfect assignment: write 40+ pages about W. H. Auden. He was (and is) my favorite poet and a perennial muse. Few things invigorate me as much as pulling out his Collected Poems or diving into one of his essays.

    And yet, I couldn’t write that paper to save my life.

    I tried everything: Writing from home. Writing at the library. Writing in Starbucks. Writing in a different library. Writing in a different country. Maybe I need more sources, I thought. So I bought more Auden books. No dice. I even took time off from work, swearing that THIS would get me across the finish line. That didn’t work either.

    It felt impossible to explain my predicament to others. For one thing, I was deeply ashamed. What was wrong with me? I knew how to write. Heck, I was a good writer. My profs actually enjoyed grading my papers. I’d written more papers than I could count and even published a book of short stories. How had I lost my mojo?

    But more than that, I just didn’t know why I froze every time I opened the Word doc that contained my work in progress. And it wasn’t just mental. My throat would constrict. My chest would tighten. My heart would race. It was all I could do to sit in my seat, let alone stay on task.

    Lately, I’ve been reading The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Morgan Schafler. It’s blown my mind, and I’m still trying to pick up the pieces and put them back together. One passage especially stuck out to me:

    When people say they don’t know why they can’t sleep, what they usually mean is they’re not ready to explore the possible reasons out loud. Saying words out loud changes something.

    Sometimes you say a thought out loud to give it weight because it matters. Sometimes you say a thought out loud to let it go because it’s trivial. Until you allow the words to hit the air, it can be difficult to tell which is which. The stakes are higher when you say something out loud because the truth becomes clearer to you.

    Change “sleep” to “write.” The resulting passage is just as true.

    As writers, we have the perfect canvas for saying thoughts out loud: the blank page. Because often, it’s not enough to talk through the things getting in our way. We have to perform the act of writing and get our whole selves involved. That often feels counterproductive. “If I’m going to write,” we say, “I ought to be working on my project.” But no. Instead, you need to put that aside and start interrogating yourself on the page.

    If you’re blocked, you might not be up for this challenge. It’s a scary thing to do. A vulnerable thing to do. Only you can decide if you’ve got the resources you need to walk down the path.

    But once you have the courage and the support you need, beautiful things can happen. You get to trade shame and self-loathing for love and peace—not because you’ve somehow earned the right thanks to your production, but because you’ve chosen to pursue the truth.