December 21, 2020
How Writing Perfectionism Kills Creativity
I’m not really a perfectionist. I’m a jack of all trades and master of some, but I don’t care about perfection. In some sense, I consider it a part of the artistic process for a work to have imperfections – we’ll get back to this, it’s crucial. And so, writing perfectionism is something I reject.
But it wasn’t always like that.
I used to spend hours on a single paragraph; whole nights on trying to figure out – in vain – what the perfect chapter would look like.
But then years passed, life happened, and I became more experienced. I also became more skillful, to be sure, but realizing the harms of writing perfectionism is about experience, not skill.
In this post I’ll try to offer some of this experience and show you how writing perfectionism kills your creativity and harms your work. To be a perfectionist writer is to assign quantitative aspects to an inherently qualitative endeavor. Or, in plain English, a perfect answer can only exist for questions like “How much is 5+5?” and not for “Should my antagonist be more subtle?”
Writing as art involves affect, not perfection. In other words, it’s precisely imperfection that gives meaning, affect, and ultimately value to the work.
Imperfections only Show How Talented You Are
One of the most popular posts on Home for Fiction is the one on Jinjer, Romanticism, and duality. I’d like to think it’s because my take is a very original one, but I’m not naive.
Rather, because Jinjer is a popular metal band – metal music has strongly theoretical popular underpinnings – it’s natural that there are many people interested in them. I guess after they’ve watched the umpteenth reaction video, they have to read something…
Now, where does all this fit in our topic, writing perfectionism?
In that inspiration for this post came while I was listening to a live performance by Jinjer. Now, metal might or might not be your thing, but few (who have watched any of the band’s live performances) would disagree that the vocalist’s skill is incredible.
Yet, guess what? I have found live performances where her voice displays ever-so-slight pitch imperfections.
Does that make me feel any less in awe of her skills?
Not only is the answer “not in the slightest”, but it actually makes me realize even more what a great singer she is. You feel a chill of sublime awe when you’re reminded by such imperfections actually how difficult singing like that is.
To make mistakes – as a vocalist, a writer, or any artist – is to add value to your work as a whole, since imperfections offer a point of reference.
But there’s more to it.
Art Is Precisely in the Imperfection
The truth is, imperfection is where art resides.
When it comes to writing, in particular, your imperfections as a writer allow your humanity to become more visible. An authorial style, after all, is about squeezing yourself through the cracks – that let the light through, to mix my metaphors a bit (with apologies to the late Leonard Cohen).
And since I’ve used music so much in this post, let’s complete the parallelism with a reference to the Japanese rock band BAND-MAID, who – among other distinctive things – rely on a linguistically intriguing mix of English and Japanese:
You should be knowing
BAND-MAID “Dice”
that situation you got
後戻りなどもうできないよ
社会も 価値も 時間も
You cried out in a loud voice
待ってなんてくれないよ
無情で 無感情 悲しい 現実さ
If you listen to the song, you’ll realize the vocalist’s English pronunciation isn’t perfect.
So what?
Art is in the imperfection. Just think of Jack Kerouac and the peculiarities of his style – in case you didn’t know, Kerouac didn’t feel comfortable with English until late in his teens.
Writing Perfectionism Leads to Creative Paralysis
Writing perfectionism becomes paralysis. The perfectionist dares nothing out of fear of doing something wrong. Sometimes people end up rewriting their stories dozens of times, chasing something that doesn’t exist (hurting their stories irreparably in the process).
Not to mention, being “just” good enough, rather than chasing imperfection, allows you to actually experience life which, ironically, makes you better.
Write; make mistakes; let your characters and your stories down.
You’ll treat the next ones better.
5 Comments
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Good to know.
I stop when I make myself cry. Reading fiction has to be an emotional experience for humans – we’re not dealing with physics textbooks.
Emotions are sloppy. Emotions are over the top. And emotions can be easily overdone.
It is hard for a writer to evoke feelings in a reader, and describing feelings is not the way. So once I figure out how to engage the emotions – and have removed my own little set of obvious flaws – I’m finished with that piece.
It is also something I see when I read old favorites – if I can remain objective, if I don’t get pulled in, I might be able to logically figure out how their authors did what makes them my favorites. But if I can’t, I’m learning how to do what they do – in a non-objective way, if that makes sense.
With the better ones, I just give up and enjoy the ride – and hope some of it sticks.
Well said. Emotions are sloppy and not particularly sense-making (not all the time, anyway), so approaching them from a clinical perspective is not a very smart thing to do as a writer.
I’ve also noticed something else, which I remembered inspired by your comment on old favorites: reading my older works falls into two categories: i) they make me cringe but I also feel emotional attachment to the characters; ii) they make me cringe, but I feel nothing else. I consider the former to still be worth reading, it’s a Litmus test of sorts.
I’m safe. I stay away from my older works. 🙂
But before I really learned to write, while I was working out all the details of my WIP, and while I still lived in New Jersey and had a writing partner, I wrote a rough draft of the whole story, from the same beginning to the end of the final volume of the trilogy, and THAT is cringe-worthy.
I knew what, but not how.
No one other than long-suffering Sandy, now published herself, will ever see those words.
And, though I consult that draft at the beginning of my process for writing each scene, one of the hardest things I’ve found is how that draft tends to overwhelm me.
There SO much good in it, emotionally – and it is SO amateurish that it hurts.
I now treat reading it with extreme care and wariness.
I can relate!
My face remains slapped. But I thank you for the awakening through pain. Perfectionism is always a hindering to action. No matter the origin, it hinders meaningful action, always.
As for the reading of preferred/classics/(personal) canon: I treat them with utmost reverence. I learn from them all I can, which demands of me I read them as if every word, punctuation mark, diacritic, as if every single thing was calculated and measured, pondered and designed. Is it really written that way? Never. Even machines bug and make mistakes. But this how I can focus my attention to learn from them.