On Perfectionism and the Writer

Or, on how it has a time and a place.

I’ve been working on the second draft rewrite of my post-WW1 novel for almost two months now. So far, I've written through the late spring and into summer. The grass has grown high outside my writing room window and then has been drastically cut back. The trees have bloomed beautifully, then slowly retreated into their green summer coats. The hedge has grown, flowers have emerged, birds have landed, and, on many days, the sun has shone so brightly I’ve had to draw down the blind. Through all of this, I’ve tried to keep the word count building without letting my perfectionism creep in. 

Now, I don’t want to bring some twist of fate tumbling down on my head, but I’ve got to say that so far I’m finding it easier to write the early drafts of this novel than I did my last one. One of the reasons* for this is because I’ve (mainly, sometimes) been able to quieten my perfectionist alter-ego. No doubt there will come a time when I will be immensely grateful for her input, but these early drafts are not the time. 

Why? Because I think perfectionism can be both a gift and a curse for writers. It’s true that I have my perfectionist tendencies to thank for my love of editing and the patience to go over and over each page with the hope of making it sing. But perfectionism can be a hindrance, too. Let it go unchecked and it can keep us from making any progress at all. And I know, because I’ve done that over and over, too.

The thing is, if you sit down in front of a blank page and tell yourself that what comes out of your fingertips needs to be exactly right, then you’ll probably find it near-impossible to begin. I’ve written before on how I think novels are built up layer by layer; so it follows that no single layer can ever be perfect on its own. Instead, we writers need to find a way to forge forwards despite the knowledge that these drafts will not be as good as we want them to be. How can they be, when, by definition, what we're hoping to achieve has to be built up in stages? 

Because of this, when I sit down each morning and look at the blank page, I try not to think too much about the story in my head and how I can do justice to it. Instead, I tell myself: just write something, it doesn’t have to be good.

Academically, of course, I know this is a lie. I’m writing in the hope my work will be traditionally published, and to get there it will absolutely need to be (more than) good. Still, I find the lie a helpful one and, though I tell it to myself all the time, it hasn’t yet lost its potency. 

When I give myself permission not to focus on making my writing *good*, it frees my mind to start inventing, to keep putting one word after another and to get into something resembling a writer’s flow. I suppose this is my own (healthier?) version of the never-actually-said-by-Hemingway advice to write drunk, edit sober. In other words: shut out the perfectionist long enough to let yourself write with creative abandon, then let her back in when it’s time to smarten everything up. 

Perhaps the secret – whether your method of choice is to lie to yourself about the quality of work required or to start knocking back whisky before elevenses – is simply to release yourself from the pressure of trying to get it right first time. 

Because there's no such thing as ‘right first time’ in fiction, is there? Manuscripts change and grow and get pruned back all the time (a bit like the grass, so to speak). Even if every word in a section was exquisitely placed, every character’s motivation beautifully on point, and every description, simile and metaphor perfectly positioned… no doubt a butterfly would flap its wings elsewhere in the novel and the whole scene would have to be cut, anyway.

And so! Why try and achieve perfection right out of the gate when it’s not possible? I think it’s better to let it built up over time rather than force it before it’s ready. Once the story has taken shape and everything feels like it’s pretty much in the right place, perhaps that’s the time to allow your perfectionist to get to work with her polishing cloth. 

For now, I’ll keep telling myself my helpful little lie to allow the next ten thousand words to build up, and the next, and the next, and the next. 

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*The other major reason I’ve found it easier to draft this book than previous ones is because my children are now both in school and I have the luxury of a couple of fixed, daylight hours in which to write in. The importance of this cannot be overstated!

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Since my last newsletter, I’ve enjoyed:

• The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue. (Is there anything Emma Donoghue can’t do?!)

• The Porcelain Doll by Kirsten Loesch. (Multiple timelines! Family secrets! Mysterious dolls!)

• Not one but TWO books with ME/CFS representation: Toby and the Wizards of Wildhaven by Sally Doherty (my daughters have loved both Toby books and can’t wait for the third) and crime/thriller novel The Apartment Upstairs by Lesley Kara.

• Josie George’s Substack post Enough, on the easy trap of humanity’s worst self-sabotage.