Writers On Writing: Against Perfectionism
Craft books abound. For every possible writing problem there are six books on how to overcome it. Some of these books are uniquely instructive and transformative, a guiding light in the endless dark of your creative process. Others less so.
As your friendly neighborhood writing center we've separated the wheat from the chaff and in the coming months we'll be sending passages from our favorites.
This month's selection is about first drafts and the dangers of perfectionism from novelist Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird:
Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft—you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft—you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.
And then, a few pagers later:
Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.
Besides, perfectionism will ruin your writing, blocking inventiveness and playfulness and life force (these are words we are allowed to use in California). Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. Clutter is wonderfully fertile ground—you can still discover new treasures under all those piles, clean things up, edit things out, fix things, get a grip. Tidiness suggests that something is as good as it's going to get. Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation, while writing needs to breathe and move.
Ready to make a mess? Check out our calendar of upcoming workshops (both in-person and online) and get started on that beautifully imperfect first draft.