Michael T. Hare

Perfection is the death of creativity. And yes, I am speaking 100% from experience.

A little while ago, I had to quit my old WIP, ‘The Last Sparkling.’ I’d been working on it for over two years at the time and—despite the impressive timeline—it was sucking the writer out of me.

Why?

Well, let me answer that question with another book I’m currently working on. It’s a novella about a village of dragons celebrating the snowy holiday of Yuledrake, but when a vengeful ice dragon wrecks their fun, they set out on a quest to save their home. It’s a sweet, emotional journey about healing, love, and what it truly means to celebrate Christmas. I’m finding that this book isn’t draining my love for writing—instead, it seems to be bolstering it.

But why? What’s the difference between The Last Sparkling and this book?

The answer, my friend, is perfection.

Writers everywhere need to be wary of perfectionism because it’s an all-consuming void that will never be satisfied. One minute, you’re delighted with your work, and the next, you edit until it sounds ‘perfect.’ This process is a continuum, and it’ll keep you spiraling until your mind feels raw and you begin to dread writing as a whole.

Don’t confuse perfectionism with editing, though. Editing is good to an extent, but I’ve found that it’s a common vehicle for perfection. If you’ve noticed that perfection is beginning to take over your life, I have a small list of steps that might help you.

Step 1. FREEZE! Take a break from writing altogether. The more you write from a perfectionist state of mind, the more you’ll confuse writing with that never-ending itch to make your story perfect. If you’re anything like me, you begin to hate writing when what you actually hate is perfection. 

Step 2. Ease up. After a long break, approach some less sensitive stories and don’t exercise as much perfection while writing them. Do something fun, relaxing, and short—like a short story, short story collection, or even a novella.

Step 3. Write for YOU. Take a break from the stress of writing for publication and write for yourself, your friends, or your family. Writing for publication can cause a lot of stress on authors—especially new ones like myself—and it can lead to the belief that your WIP needs to match the standards for publishing. The truth is that there are no standards, and that perfect is solely defined by you. So, I urge caution to anyone seeking perfection and prompt you to ask yourself this valuable question:

“What does perfect really mean?”

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word perfect means ‘being entirely without fault or defect.’ When you hear the words fault and defect, you likley think of a paragraph that you hate or a storyline that ‘wasn’t as good as another writer’s.’ Let me ask you another question, though:

“What if every so-called fault or defect was actually what defined your unique style of storytelling? What if these little things were the reason you stood out among thousands of other authors?”

I emulate my favorite authors all the time (and I believe we always should), but recently, I’ve been open to hearing my own voice and ignoring that nagging perfection. It’s trying to tell me that my voice isn’t good enough, and it wants me to think that it’s somehow less valuable because it’s different than most authors I read. Deep down, I know that isn’t true, and I’m taking steps to embrace my writing without worrying about that strange, idolized word ‘perfect.’ An infinite number of opinions will give you an infinite number of definitions for it, and it’s too broad to be reliable.

Don’t seek perfection. Seek happiness. He who seeks perfection finds only imperfection, and it’s not a journey worth taking.

Best wishes,

Michael.