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I am more than qualified to speak about today’s topic.
In 2022, I published my first full-length novel called Oblivion Black. Members of the Write Catalyst Mastermind witnessed me slave over this manuscript in our co-writing Zooms since the group’s inception during COVID. They also knew that I had been “working on” this story since NaNoWriMo 2012.
Yes. It was TEN years from first draft to publication.
It seems like an impossible amount of time to be sitting on a book. I say “sitting” on a book, because most of the time was not spent actively writing. The years were wasted on changing things, changing them back, overthinking and overworking everything.
In the end, the final book was not much different than its original form. Instead of moving forward in my life’s dream of seeing Oblivion Black out in the world, it was a decade of second guessing, self-doubt, and procrastination.
FROM THE ARTIST’S WAY by Julia Cameron
Perfectionism has nothing to do with getting it right. It has nothing to do with fixing things. It has nothing to do with standards. Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move ahead.
It is a loop—an obsessive, debilitating closed system that causes you to get stuck in the details of what you are writing or painting or making and to lose sight of the whole.
Perfectionism and Its Equally Bad Counterpart
Equally harmful is when we don’t take the time and energy to learn what we need to do and how to do it. The artistic wave is so exhilarating, we don’t think about whether or not our boat has any holes in it. We sink before we reach the shore (forgive the cliche).
This is where impatience and hubris prevent us from putting the time and effort to develop the manuscript into its best form. We rush to market, thinking our idea is so amazing that we have to get it out NOW. And end up with bad reviews that make us believe we lack talent when all we might have needed was the right editor or a well-prepared launch strategy.
The dilemma
Some of that reckless creative energy is the secret zing of compelling work that gets lost in rewriting it to death.
We can’t be blindly confident nor overly cautious. We must find balance.
So how do we know if we’re over-editing our manuscript?
As a writer who’s spent more time rewriting than writing, here are a few signs you may have a problem.
7 Signs You Are Over-Editing Your Story
- You revisit the same material more than a reasonable amount of times.
- You change things, and then revert them to their original state—sometimes more than once (second-guessing).
- You ask for feedback over and over again, shaping your story to everyone else’s opinions
- You don’t believe anyone when they say it’s good or great.
- The narrative has lost its natural propulsion, its voice and rawness, because of over-editing.
- It has taken you more than a few years to finish polishing (I’ll give you one to three years for a novel, excluding those who have a demanding job or personal lives. Not ten years … unless you’re Proust).
- You have fallen out of love with your story
Yes, you have to do your best to make the story sing the way you want it to. But at some point, you must have faith, be decisive, and move on.
How about you?
Do you struggle with perfectionism in your writing?
Have you ever rushed to submit/publish projects before they were ready?
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