No Use Crying Over Spilled Ink: Why Every Word Written is a Step Forward, even Words that Will Never Make it onto the Page
I used to agonize over every word I wrote as I wrote it. It’s the horrible existence of being a perfectionist that makes you feel like everything you do, say, write MUST be purely flawless. This made me feel as though if I wasn’t the best writer in the history of writers, I shouldn’t even be bothering. It’s a jacked-up way of living, to be sure, when nothing you do can ever measure up to your own absurdly unrealistic expectations. When this is someone’s only perception, it’s no wonder that giving up is the lesser of two evils (the first being writing imperfectly, which as we all know is the sixth Deadly Sin, after Pride).
I always used to think that every word I wrote needed to exist in some revered status—it was going to be published in a book or an anthology, and thus needed to be absolute in its perfection. I can now see how desperately this limited me in my creative endeavors, stifling my creativity to the point of a stranglehold, where the only air that escaped was forced. Because of this monstrous self-harm, I was stuck in a perpetual writer’s block from the time I entered university to just recently—a full decade of smothering myself in a blanket I thought was made of security and comfort. Our minds can play all kinds of tricks on us, sleight of hand which has you mistaking things you know are real for things you wish were true.
The most important thing to remember is that we are in control—maybe not always of our illnesses, but of our choices. And we can choose every day to be a writer, or not. We don’t have to resign ourselves to whatever choices we made yesterday, or 10 years ago. As T/MIs, we need to prioritize grasping at whatever sense of control we can get our hands on. So how do we choose to see our writing from a different perspective? That’s easy. We just need to use it in a different way.
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT, OR AT LEAST ADEQUATE—AND ADEQUATE IS PERFECT
The greatest thing about writing is its malleability. We celebrate authors who can write in many genres, accents, and styles. In order to choose to write without stifling the creativity essential for its production, we need to be malleable in what we are writing for.
Even if our writing is a means to something else—fame, fortune, or just an honest living—we need to write as though those end-results mean literally nothing. Looking at our writing from the lens of mere practice lends us the creative license to be imperfect, genuine, even goofy at times. It guides us into a more relaxed state of being where creativity can take the reins. ‘Practice’ allows us to start from a mindset of being ‘unfinished’—the starting line for all those who don’t suffer from debilitating perfectionism—without the pressures of the purpose. Unless we start here, we will be forever beating ourselves up over our unworthy prose.
ABANDONING THE PAGE, BUT NOT WHAT WAS LEARNED FROM IT
I’ve found the easier way to jump into this is to write something that you know will never actually make it into your work. Say you’re drafting a novel about a woman going through the stages of grief after her husband dies, and you plan to write the entire thing from her POV, but you’re stuck. You can’t write another word, or even worse—you can’t start. Change your perspective trying a few of the things below:
Love defined. Write a scene between the woman and her husband before the story started. You may not ever use this in the novel, but you’ll get a better concept of their relationship and how it affected her.
How others see us. Write a scene from a side character’s POV. It could be about the main character, or not. This gives you a better sense of the world you’ve created and details the woman’s relationship with her friends/family/neighbors, which can tell you more about her as a character.
Short but sweet. Write micro scenes. These are short snippets of no more than 200 words that give you a taste of a scene, dialogue, characterization or worldbuilding. These are also great for those who have short attention spans or are in a depressive episode. A little is better than nothing, and it can propel you forward with a more optimistic attitude.
Go wild! Write a scene from an animal’s POV, such as a pet. This exercise is great for shifting your own perspective into a more creative tone, because you must shift into the mindset of a squirrel, or a dog, or a tiger. Plus, it gets us out of our human brains and into a more primitive landscape, which is often refreshing, not to mention fun!
Show don’t tell. Close your eyes and imagine you’re in the novel. Take every detail in, and then write what you saw. (For a more interesting experience, write/type what you’re SEEING while keeping your eyes closed. You'll be able to keep your attention focused on the scene/landscape/world, but you'll also get to laugh at all the ways you misspelled things*).
Weather the storm. Brainstorm! If all else fails and you just can’t get those words off the page, map out your work in the most detailed way you can fathom. Dig deep and dream big! While your creative side of your brain is activated, you might get inspired on what to write next, and it might just be a scene that you can handle in that moment.
*It is a vital attribute to be able to laugh at yourself, and one that you should constantly strive to improve. Especially for T/MIs, if we take ourselves too seriously, it tends to seep into our thinking patterns and causes negativity to skyrocket and optimism to plummet. I don't have to harp on about the importance of keeping a positive mindset, but I do want to reiterate that laughing lightheartedly at our own mistakes (unlike when this teasing might come from OTHERS, or as a form of self-beratement) seems to rewire pathways in our brains which tell us "It's not a big deal." For people who think every failure is the end of the world (guilty!), this rewiring is an essential practice, and should be taken daily as needed.
MIND OVER MATTER
Who knows, you might even keep some of these castoffs, but even if you don't—they weren't a waste of time or effort. They allowed you to understand your story in a new way, which will undoubtedly help you to write the rest of it.
Overcoming perfectionism in our writing is a battle we may need to fight daily… until we don’t have to anymore. Give yourself the grace to fail, to waste time, to be “not quite there yet.” Your work is a constant WIP—and so are you. And that, my friend, is not something to be ashamed of. Rather, be proud of your progress.
