By Ratika Deshpande
I wrote for years with no particular goal in mind. I blogged and wrote stories because it was fun. Occasionally, I’d submit a story or an essay, and get an acceptance here and there.
Then, a couple of years ago, I started sharing my work more actively and purposefully—I blogged more regularly, explored writing newsletters, pitched articles and submitted stories and essays to magazines.
In other words, I wrote with the aim of working as a writer. There were stakes involved now. It mattered what other people thought of my writing. Somewhere I grew afraid and started doubting my abilities, despite having written for years.
Over time, I realized I’d become a captive of the Demon of Perfectionism, which I’ve learned can plague you even if you have the time, motivation, and ideas. The Demon of Perfectionism:
- Loves beginners, who might feel they’re not ready
- Has many expectations and wants instant gratification of said expectations
- Enjoys presenting you with an image of your (mostly metaphorical) nakedness exposed to everyone in the world, so that you become afraid and don’t write
- Wants you to blow away the minds of your favourite people—and do so on your first try, and every single time you write
- Wants you to be clever and original and interesting
- Wants you to find the perfect routine/method
- Constantly plagues you with “What ifs” about Paths B, C, and D when you choose Path A. Whichever choice you make will encourage further “What ifs” about the other paths. What if you could have written a story about your trip to the Ganges instead of a travel essay? What if you’d submitted a different poem to that prestigious contest?
- Loves it when you look at those who’ve already succeeded at projects like yours and feel bad about your own odds of success
- Will constantly make you doubt your abilities, reconsider your current project, ask you to do more research, get more qualifications, find the perfect writing space, spend more time editing a piece…The Demon will exhaust you; its repository of tools to keep you trapped is endless.
How Do You Fight the Demon of Perfectionism?
The Demon feeds on your fear, on your inaction. It hates it when you ignore It. But that’s like ignoring an itch. You need to do more, be proactive. The solutions below may sound contradictory/counterintuitive, but I’ve found them helpful in keeping the Demon at bay:
Be open to mistakes. The Demon wants you to produce flawless work; but no piece of art is ever truly complete. Once you accept this core feature of creation, mistakes don’t seem that big of an issue. Just think of the Mona Lisa—a painting that took Leonardo da Vinci years and was still incomplete when he died, but is still considered a masterpiece.
The fear of mistakes and of not being prepared makes it difficult to just get started. Here, using creative constraints might help. What could that look like? Create specific rules, then work with those. This could be related to form (an essay, a memoir told through lists); word count (a drabble, a 750-word vignette); genre (fantasy, romance); time-limit (5 minutes, 5 sentences; writing and submitting a piece in 24 hours); topic/theme and so on.
Try to use 2-3 different kinds of constraints at a time (but not too many!). So, for example, you could write an essay about all the times you ended a friendship written as a list, with each bullet on the list being exactly 50 words. Or you could write a series of romantic drabbles about a magician and his botanist partner, each written with a 10-minute timer. The combinations can help you break out of usual patterns of writing, and you might even surprise yourself. Writing won’t feel so scary; it might even start feeling like play again.
Write badly on purpose. Sometimes, even constraints won’t help. On those days, we must push through by deliberately writing bad stuff. Just start. Tell yourself, I only have to write one bad paragraph. That’s easier than telling yourself that you’ll write one good paragraph. We can’t predict or plan for good writing, but we do know what poor writing looks like. Go tease the Demon. Write shitty sentences on purpose. You’ll eventually find your way into writing the thing you actually wanted to write and that momentum is all that’s needed to shoo the Demon away.
Have deadlines. Look at calls for submissions; the sooner the deadline, the less the time you have to procrastinate or ideate. It’s similar to using creative constraints, since many calls have specific guidelines. The only difference—and a beneficial one, I think—is that the deadline is externally imposed, which is helpful if self-imposed deadlines don’t motivate you, since you’re the one who set them in the first place.
Relatedly, work fast, without thinking. Again, it’s all about momentum and action. As soon as you stop moving, the Demon will pounce and tie your hands.
Ray Bradbury explaineds the benefits: “The worst thing you do when you think is lie — you can make up reasons that are not true for the things that you did, and what you’re trying to do as a creative person is surprise yourself — find out who you really are, and try not to lie, try to tell the truth all the time. And the only way to do this is by being very active and very emotional, and get it out of yourself — making things that you hate and things that you love, you write about these then, intensely. When it’s over, then you can think about it; then you can look, it works or it doesn’t work, something is missing here. And, if something is missing, then you go back and reemotionalize that part, so it’s all of a piece.”
It also helps to work with small plans and goals. Becoming a best-selling author or a full-time writer are big goals and can take years. No journey is the same; there’s no universal formula. Again, it’s this uncertainty that the Demon loves. Smaller, concrete goals are more achievable. They’re like stepping stones. They help you keep moving and they show you the way forward. The Demon’s aim is to confuse you; goals provide a way out of that confusion and towards action.
An incomplete draft that you don’t have an end for is similarly exciting for the Demon. A complete draft? Not so much. The more stuff you finish, the more material you have to edit and submit. And the more you submit, the less the influence of the Demon, because submitting requires courage, which the Demon tries to steal from you.
One excellent way of practicing finishing things, if you’re working on a novel or a long, deeply-reported essay that will take months to produce, is to blog. Blogs have no rules except the ones you make. They provide a quick and easy way to put your work in front of people. You get to practice your craft without any stakes involved. When you blog regularly, the thought of what other people will think of your work will no longer sound as scary—another blow to the Demon’s power.
Finally, listen to Caroline Langerman and Don’t Do The Thing That’s Not The Thing! The Demon drives you to do everything that’s not writing. It doesn’t want you to do the actual thing–putting words on the paper/screen. No amount of research, upskilling, learning, reading will ever be adequate. We become writers by writing, first and foremost. Everything else, as I’ve said before, is secondary. More importantly—as I learned over several demotivating years—we do not have unlimited time.
“More importantly–as I learned over several demotivating years–we do not have unlimited time. I’ll leave you with Winnie Lim‘s beautiful articulation of this fact: “For every piece I was not writing because I was writing too much, because there is always “next week”, I am taking for granted my mortality and my capacity to create.
The act of creation, is a privilege. To create, requires life, physical health, the co-ordination of our psyche and nervous system, relative financial stability, time, space, a lifetime of learning and consumption, previous generations of creators, the lives of our ancestors.”
Bio: Ratika Deshpande (she/her) is a writer, student, and blogger from India. You can support her writing here.
