I’ve been thinking about my goal to become a writer and the fact that, at nearly 40, I still haven’t made the plunge and published – or even, for that matter, done much writing. What is it that is holding me back? Why are my dreams filled with long hours happily clacking away at the keyboard, yet my reality is an amalgam of avoidance and procrastination techniques? Why do I procrastinate and avoid an activity in which I long to engage?
I think for me it starts with a lack of confidence along with a pesky tendency towards perfectionism. Perfectionism is a lovely trait in an editor, but lousy when you are trying to undertake any kind of creative endeavor. Not that the end product cant be perfect, the problem is that the perfectionist in me wont let the brainstorming process really get rolling because every idea tossed out has to be perfect before it lands on the paper.
I haven’t really found a good way to deal with this issue of perfectionism, other than just plowing through it and trying to write despite the little voice in my head detailing everything that’s wrong with what I just wrote.
But the confidence issue compounds the perfectionism issue, or perhaps they are related. I don’t know where the lack of confidence comes from. I sit down to write at times and think I have nothing of value to contribute to all the printed words out there. Again, my solution for this is just to write anyways – even if it’s not perfect, even if it’s not any better than anything else out there. Just write. Maybe someday a stroke of genious will find its way through my fingertips and on to the page. Until then, I’ll continue getting practice writing and I’ll work up the courage to start submitting my work for publication.
today’s link: Confident Writing
todays questions:
- why do you write?
- how do you reign in your internal editor?
- how do you deal with issues with confidence or perfectionism?
