It has to be perfect
"Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be our best. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth; it's a shield." Brene Brown
at least, according to the song by Fairground Attraction.
However, I am here to tell you that perfection is impossible.
I had a phase a while ago when I started to make a collection of songs which tell outright lies. Many of them on meteorological matters - for instance, I am sure many of us recall Fleetwood Mac proclaiming that thunder only happens when it’s raining.
Clearly, that’s just wrong.
But, as Isaac Asimov once told us, some things are more wrong than others.
When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
Asimov, quoted in Wikipedia
And this Fairground Attraction claim is the wrongest of the wrong.
So, if you want to indulge in some more procrastination, there’s some links below to more songs which are wrong, and you can add to them in the comments…
Perfectionism
I’ve written in a post about about Writing and Fear my favourite illustration of how perfectionism can lead us astray. What matters is the weight of pots!
This is from of my favourite stories about creativity comes from the book Art and Fear, by David Bayles and Ted Orland
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A".
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.Bayles and Orland
There is something about perfectionism which brings a kind of creative paralysis - rooted in fear.
Maybe it comes from childhood, when we were ridiculed for - singing out of tune, inventing a new method of pleating a skirt for a Sindy doll, drawing a very untidy and smeared map of Mesopotamia…
Imaginative examples, there… not in the lest autobiographical.
We can remind ourselves of aphorisms, The Perfect Is The Enemy of the Good, for instance. Maybe I should cross stitch myself a sampler… Only much as I love embroidery, cross stitch is my nemesis because it requires precision and I don’t do precision.
But really, in my experience, the only thing that works is to practise failing. Keep on doing things you’re just not that good at. Learn to enjoy the process. The doing.
For me, taking up textile arts - embroidery, weaving, quilting - this really worked to break my personal creative blocks. I am SO not good at it - and yet, I keep on because I enjoy. And even though I have a love and appreciation for the work of great textile artists - I can still see there’s a certain charm in my own work. There’s room for us all.
And the more I do, the better I get.
Not by weaving and unweaving one little sampler, but by making one sampler after another.
So it is with writing. But until I let myself write the crappy drafts, unless I let myself fail - I didn’t start to write better.
It’s important to establish a base line to build on, and the only way to do that is to DO. To risk failing.
Procrastination
I am the Queen of Procrastination.
(I should point out there are two kinds of procrastination. There’s the useful stuff, which recharges our creative batteries, allows ideas to incubate - elapsed time is an essential element of most large creative projects. I’m not talking about that stuff here.)
I was over thirty years late being awarded my degree - and I am naturally academic.
Between the Brownie Writers Badge - which I nagged to be allowed to do - and finding a publisher for my first novel - forty five years.
How I wish I’d faced it sooner.
The thing is, I did spend time on reading up on motivation, checking out self help stuff about procrastination, navel-gazing and wondering what was wrong with me.
A lot, it turns out.
But since I had surgery in 2016, I no longer have a navel - so that’s one procrastination hobby no longer available. Obviously this is a silly joke, but it contains the belly-button fluff of truth.
It doesn’t really matter - motivation, psychological issues, any of that.
As a very annoying but wise friend used to say, JFDI
And in the end, I just fucking did.
It’s the only way.
A confession
I started working on the first full draft (I have a detailed outline already) of Novel 3 a few weeks ago.
In that time I have rewritten the opening chapter and yes, a few variations on a prologue. I have been telling myself that it’s not good enough yet. That I need to have a strong beginning to build on, before I commit to writing the rest of the novel.
It has taken me a couple of weeks to slowly admit to myself that this is simply not true. I know better than this.
I know from experience that writing to the end of the draft is more important than polishing the beginning. I know that by the time I get to the end of the draft, that so many elements of the story might well have changed, and I will need to be polishing that beginning all over again. I know that rewriting the beginning and the ending of my novel will happen more often, and will take more time, than polishing the middle.
My name is Ann, and I am a procrastinator.
There are many different causes for procrastination, but in this particular case, the cause and the method lies in perfectionism.
I so much want this novel to be as good as it is in my imagination. It’s a good idea. I have a great hook, a fantastic blurb. It’s a twisty story. And the theme is emotional, and personal.
So now I have to actually write the novel.
And I have to let go of the idea that it can be perfect, and yet accept that if I write the absolutely essential shitty first draft, then at least I can start working on making it better.
Randall Jarrell once said “ ..a novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.”
I can do that.
Inspiration
Found on twitter, from Hank Green
Go, work on EVERYTHING YOU WILL EVER MAKE!
And remember, you already started
Ann
If you would like some editorial help with your novel draft. please do get in touch and we can have a chat. Check out my Facebook Page, at The Accomplice and message me there for more details, or get in touch through my substack email.
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Bonus Links
That Creativity thread on Twitter
Other songs that tell lies -
Katie Melua, debunked by Simon Singh
Good sport that she was, she did actually revise the lyrics rather than explaining to him it was just a metaphor…
Here’s The Secret Barrister, on twitter, debunking Bananarama
Technically speaking, the lion does not sleep in the jungle