Quite a specific issue

Well, all I can say is, you just described me. And probably perfectionism in general. I get in major ruts that I have a really hard time getting out of. I wish I had more confidence, too.

To keep myself going, I have to remember what I love about writing and remind myself to lighten up and have fun. I have to tell myself that persistence is the biggest thing. If I just keep at it long enough, eventually I will write a book that's "good enough." And I have to hold onto the little bits of validation I've received from other people so when I feel like I'm really sucking, I can logically remind myself: "But so-and-so thinks I'm good at xyz, and I respect her opinion, so it's not all worthless."

My book is out to beta readers right now. As I'm sitting here, I'm thinking, they'll probably say it's terrible. I've probably wasted a ton of time here. I guess I've had to make peace with the fact that this is just how I am, and I just have to keep going because I can't not write. So there really isn't another option.

Just accept that your first draft will be TOTAL GARBAGE. Complete crap. You're writing the story down. That's it! Then it will go through drafts and drafts and revisions and chops and shuffles until it's good enough for someone to read. And then after that more chops and shuffles. The important part is just writing it down, even if it's crap. Even if you're writing, "Then Bobby went to the store [scene about him petting a dog]".

Well, first, I think long breaks kill anyone. Anything more than a week is a horrible idea. But how do you write without caring that it ever gets published? Who said you had to? Where did that come from?

I wouldn't write a word unless I had every intention of getting it published. I do care that what I write gets published.

Because of this, I know it means I can't take long breaks, I can't make excuses, I either have to sit down and write, or getting published is never going to happen. I have to write and finish this project, and then the next one, and the next one, and the next one. It's a process, not an event.

As a writer, you aren't supposed to gauge, and who cares what a writer's group says? It matters not at all that you say a plot is or isn't good enough, whether a character is or isn't good enough, or whether anything else is or isn't god enough. This is not how it works.

What matters is whether agents and editors say it's good enough, and what you think about it means nothing. As one SF editor said, your job is to write it, and the editor's job is to judge it, so do your job and let him do his.

Either you want to be a writer, or you don't. Either you want to be published, or you don't. If you do, then forget all about gauging anything. Self-confidence won't make your work any better, and lack of self-confidence won't make it any worse. This is also true of what writer's groups, or anyone else thinks.

If you want to be a published writer, control the one and only thing that is in your control, which is how much you write, and how often you submit what you write. Everything else is an excuse to fail.

Care or don't care, it doesn't matter. But stop taking breaks, write as often as possible, and submit everything you write. It may take ten novels to get there, but do you think any great painter managed to sell a first, or a tenth, painting

Deep breath, love. I'll send you the first draft of the first book I ever wrote and if you can read it I'll give you all the money in my bank account -- all 6$. It's total crap -- as are all my first drafts. But after it is done, the story is there.
Write flash fiction, novellas, novelettes, short-stories to build up some steam.
Did you take notes from your novels? If so take the notes and re-write (from scratch) the story.
Silence your inner crit in first drafts, he is an evil bloody ogre wielding a club of sabotage.

I'm fairly certain you've stolen my writer identity as well as others'.

I try giving myself permission to not care and that usually is short lived. It's those cycles in between when I give myself permission, and before that dies, that keeps me progressing. Writing and me is like a toxic relationship, it kills me but we can't leave each other.

IMO, people who write with their ultimate goal to be published are misleading themselves.

Like the others have said, let the first draft be shit. You'll make improvements, and you call them improvements because you believe they improve the work--and trust me, I've been there and thought that the first stuff I wrote couldn't be improved; I was wrong. And don't get too picky, edit for content and then for readability; you don't need to eliminate things according to a list, or to some equation. Is there a problem reading it? Yes, fix it. Now? No. Can it be better? Have you tried? No? Then leave it alone.

Write for yourself; edit for the reader.

Hillsy7 said:

Would getting a collaborator help. Someone who knows good plotting, has a great feel for pacing and character, but struggles with the writing side? How do you find someone like that who's prepared to just evaluate other people's work?

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I don't think a co-author will help you. You'd have to know the person well, like your twin, and know each other's strengths and weaknesses, and be on the same level of writing and storytelling to work well together. My writing buddies and I wouldn't be able to do this; I don't think some stray writer would do this well with you.

I need to find a way to tell how dry the wood is.

Would paying an freelance editor to look at, say, the first 30K words and an outline, and asking if its worth pursuing?

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First, that editor won't be honest; they're being paid, so they will either lie or soften the blow. That's not bad, it's just business.

Second, even working with a content editor might not point you in the right direction and they're not going to hold your hand.

Should I network instead - try and find an established writer who fancies a mentoring project for a few months?

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Mentoring someone is very difficult work. I know, I do it often.

It could work well, but you'll have to find someone who shares the exact school of thought. Though calling them out on twitter of facebook wouldn't be the best way to go. "I'm your biggest fan, look at my work, help me." They might already get that a lot. I suggest you know them, and as there's only a few "very established" writers on the forums, the picking might be slim.

Though you could always not pick an "established" writer, and just someone who you think is a good writer.

What about the net, and the wisdom of crowds? Is there any way to utilise some sort of multiple feeback.....like twitch TV but for writers?

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There's sites that like, but they all turn into popularity contests. "What can I write to garner the most attention?"


First, there's no such thing as good or bad in writing and storytelling. This field is one of the most subjective "arts" in existence.
You can find out if readers like your writing and work, or if they don't you can find out why and possibly fix it.

My suggestion (and possible solution): Swing by the SYW section. http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=26 (password: Vista)
When you get 50+ posts, you can put your own work up and find out if people like it, if it's "good", or if it might need improvements. There's people who like to encourage, people who like to cut straight through work (like me), and all in between. They honestly want to help you out.
You can view and comment right away, and earn those 50 posts by doing so.

I do that. I have paralyzed myself into months of nothingness several times. I have also done the write with the screen blocked bit, and I did find it helpful (and typo ladden. Ye gods), so it's worth a shot, IMO.


I won't lie and say I've stopped getting in my own way, but I have learned to do enough mental acrobatics that I can finish things and start new ones. One thing I did that was both helpful and great fun was to write something as badly as possible. All those unnecessary adjectives and thats and justs and flowery descriptions that make ipecac retch went right in. Then I took something I'd busted my ass on and compared. Nothing quite nixes the 'This is the worst thing I've ever written' woes like actually having the worst thing you've ever written. I'm not sure if that would be helpful for everyone, but it was for me.


I would never be as harsh with other people as I am with myself. I always say 'finish, then fix it,' but it took me a looooooong time to follow my own advice. Look at your drafts like they're from someone you barely know. What would you say? Would you tell them it's all tripe and to light their fingers on fire? (Please say no. ) Or would you tell them to make a note of what's wrong and fix it later when it's done?


Best of luck.

Hillsy7 said:

I’ve not said, once, I’m writing badly.

<snip>

It isn’t that I’m writing badly; it’s that I can’t tell if I’m writing well.

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Good. And that's where you need to stop in the first blush of writing. Just keep writing. You know you don't suck so keep going.

That sentence isn't perfect? So? Keep going.

It could be better? Sure. But keep going.

If you keep going back to edit, that's all you're doing is falling into the spiral of editing and you're not getting anything written.

I get a lot of flack of being weird for what I do but it works for me. I collect plushy animals. I have two that I use for this exercise. One is a Dralion dragon (from the Cirque du Soleil Dralion) whom I've named Phillip. He's my writing partner.

I also have a smaller Chinese inspired dragon/salamander thing. His name is Earl. He's my internal editing voice.

When I'm writing and getting everything down, Earl goes in a closet, a physical real closet with the symbolic shutting of the door on the internal editor. I pull Phillip off his shelf and set him next to me. He reminds me to write. Get it down. Keep making forward progress.

When the draft is done, he goes on a shelf and I pull Earl out of the closet and set him next to me. He encourages me to take what I have and make it better.

Hillsy7 said:

Somewhere in most of the replies is the advice “free yourself to write poorly”, “it’ll be crap”, “first draft is just a sketch”…etc etc etc. My issue started during editing, then infected my writing, so that isn’t the answer long term. It started because I could spot a “bad” sentence and replace it with a “good” sentence, but I didn’t know if it was a “good enough” sentence. So I went looking for a “better” sentence, not knowing how much better it needed to be.

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At this point you will need to figure out for yourself on how best to stop this cycle. If you don't you will be caught in the perpetual cycle of editing until you've editing the voice right out of it and you are using the "IT'S NOT PERFECT ZOMG" as an excuse not to finish and send it out.

While you may use betas to help make sure it is shiny, I agree with James that at some point you need to let the agents and the editors tell you if it's 'good enough'. You start submitting until hell won't have it.

When it gets bought (see what I did there? ), you'll have an editor that will help you put that final spit and polish on it. Then it will shine. Then it will be sparkly.

People will most assuredly comment with things that help put them in the correct mindframe. Hopefully, something will stick for you to help you move past this mudpatch that is bogging you to the axels.

Good luck!

I don't know how helpful this will be for you, but one thing that kind of helps keep me going is the knowledge that self-publishing is an option, and one that is becoming easier and easier.
Now, that's not saying I don't still dream of getting a publishing deal, nor do I plan to just churn out garbage and self-pub it anywhere and everywhere I can. I'm committed to writing the very best story I can. I'm going to work very hard at it, and I'm going to sub and sub and sub. I'm going to listen to critiques and feedback and use that information to keep improving my story. And I'm going to sub some more, and more. If I reach a point where I truly feel my book cannot be improved, but no offers come, I will most likely self-pub. I may never sell a single copy, or I might, and the reviews might be horrible (another opportunity to learn...we only learn from our mistakes). Or maybe ill reach a readership that was looking for a book like mine, and i make a little money, and feel encouraged to do it again. So, I'll start the next book, with the tough lessons learned from the first. And I'll go through the process again.


Maybe it's a silly way, and an unrealistic way to stay motivated, but it works for me. I see what's published out there (traditionally and self-pubbed), and I know I can produce something that good IF I work very hard at it.

You can do it- just do it. (Nike symbol appears)

It is good to care- who says otherwise?

You have some great advice in these posts already. Let yourself write. Worry about the results later.

Are you a planner? I am- and it helps me to focus and get motivated. Find what motivates you.

What helped you when you first wrote those other novels? What has changed? Undo those negative messages- "write" over them in your mind with positive ones.

You have to ignore that inner editor, for now- who cares if it is good enough? Believe that it will be published and will be good enough...but that will never happen until it exists.

For me? I play tricks with myself to get past that. Most writing I do starts on paper or on my iPad Mini in Notes, but I do not "count" it towards my completed chapters or word count. Or at least, not until I have time to sit down with my laptop and add it all into Scrivener (my choice- but just using a Word Processor could cover the same idea). This way, I feel less pressure to get it right the first time- I can focus on getting my ideas down, and worry about the rest later.

I then find time to sit down with my laptop, and put together all of my iPad Notes, maybe every 2 weeks or so, and get to see my word count jump high- what a great feeling! I end up with maybe 12,000 words that I keep, after I discard some occasional paragraphs. But, I often find that I keep more than I thought I would, and my writing looks much better to me after I re-read it and see it all put together.

As was said above, do not take long breaks if you can help it. I type a bit every day, mostly on my iPad. I am a planner, so I know what parts I want to write, and find a few minutes here and there to jot something down. I find that knowing I will re-read it before deciding to "count" it helps me to just get it down.

What will work for you? Read around here in AW for ideas, and then do what it takes to do BIC - I think I am finally getting some of these acronyms down . First time to use it!

You don't have to not care- instead, use that passion to get started. Everyday. Just do it- believe in yourself, read AW and others to get better at it, and just keep writing.

You do care, so do it for yourself. Take care-

OP,

There's anal and then there's perfectionist anal. I think you've crossed into the latter category. I don't mean that unkindly as I'm pretty much the same way.

Thing is, no matter what I write, I'll never be satisfied, truly satisfied, published or not. Even now, I have two novels coming out this year and maybe one more, and as I look back on the finished copies I say to myself, "Good job, you wrote that part well" and then another part of my mind says "No, you could have done that better".

FWIW, there's always second-guessing in this. The drive to be perfect is what impels most writers, but you also have to realize that by pushing for that perfection, a paralysis by analysis situation may arise. Should that happen, you might not be able to write anything without analyzing it to the point of distraction.

So, yes, for now, just write, have fun, and when your novel is good enough to be accepted you and your editor can work on it and made it perfect. My two yen...

Hillsy7 said:

Well first of all - thanks for the comments. I know I'm not unique in this - I can just pinpoint a very precise problem.

(Nina - I've tried writing shorts. I don't like them. Neither to write nor to read. I've just never "got" the medium. I thought about your suggestion but could never get it to fly.)

Firstly - I've been at this a long time, trying to quit. I tell myself I'm not a writer, then I look at what I've got, what I'm capable of, and dang it if I'm not proud. I tried writing for computer games; I've tried writing/designing whole computer games so at least I can build my own stories even if the medium's different. I got somewhere GM-ing tabletop games but the buzz ain't the same (and the characters won't do what you want...hehe). Always I come back to writing. Sometimes it daydreams of action sequences when I'm listening to pieces of music. Sometimes it characters, or settings, or sketchy plot ideas. It's what I'm good at.

I want to do it justice. Maybe I don't value my own opinion, so I look for external validation. To counter that I try and be rational, and just end up with the paradox of trying to aim for a point on a scale, but not knowing how where the ends of that scale are. Like I said, I'm lucky enough (I guess) that I know I can do the work well - I've won a couple of excerpt comps and aside from the obvious opinions people have (preference of prose styles, genres, pacing etc) I've not had much in the of complaints.

An analogy would be a blind mirror polisher - You know how to polish, the processes and the craft of it, but you can never see how clear your reflection is. Have you cleared all the blemishes? Is the polishing good but the metal is warped? Is it the wrong shape? And the only question you can ask people is "Yes or no, can you see yourself?". Even if the answer is yes, how do you know it's of comparable quality to the mirror industry so you can sell it? So you either polish more (but where do you stop), or decide the metal isn't the right quality and start anew. For me, at some point during the process, I realised I didn't know anymore if I wanted to do this indefinitely (or at least until someone bought a mirror), or stop and do something else. I thought it was the latter, it wasn't, but not being able to see the quality of what I was doing meant every time I continue, the not knowing consumes my determination.

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Hillsy, Your completely nuts. I love you for it. I'm also completely nuts. To the point where I actually dread writing because I'm afraid--no, not afraid, terrified that what I'm about to write will not be good, or that it will in some way diminish the rest of the story or not live up to what I imagine the scene being in my mind. So, I only write about 500 words a day, and take several writing breaks during the course of a year because my mind can only handle so much focus on how good/bad/acceptable my writing may be. I love story-telling and creation and have always had a vivid imagination. But I also am completely off my rocker.

I'm a hard core perfectionist in all aspects of life. I want everything I do to be done absolutely flawlessly. I expect my girlfriend to eat right, work out and not talk in her sleep. But does any of that happen in reality? No...

I have come to learn that it is definately a sickness. You want to write but writing is not something that you can just do for fun and then when it doesn't get published or recognition by an agent you say, oh well, it was a ride and now I'll try again. That's not how it goes. You beat yourself up and hate yourself and hate that you can't stop thinking about what went wrong or how you could have changed this or that and maybe that might have worked. But the next time you write, by god it will be perfect this time and you'll give up everything and everyone and all of your free time in order to do it. But then, six months later you're staring at yet another imperfect manuscript.

The blind mirror polisher is a perfect analogy. I can read someone else's work and notice all of the flaws in it but also find the beauty in it. when I read my own, I can do the same thing of course, but then I think, well is that really good/funny/clever or do I just think that because I'm me and I wrote it so of course I would think that. Or, do I not like this paragraph because it truly is bad writing or just because I wrote it and I don't like it so I have a personal objection to it but others may in fact love the way it's worded. You can never read your own work objectively because you produced it. There is no element of suspense or surprise in what you're reading because the story is so internalized that the writing on screen just can't live up to what you already know about the story from your thoughts and ideas. You can drive yourself mad reading your own work. No matter how much you polish that mirror, you still can't look at it through anyone else's eyes.

It's not easy being a perfectionist. It's not easy being human. But we are not perfect. Even the best writing out there has flaws. Anyone can come on here and tell you to just write and block it out and write for fun without thoughts of how good it is or if it will be published, but you and I know better than that. We can't operate that way. Again, this is a sickness. So...you have to allow yourself to make some mistakes while writing, but keep in mind that indeed you can go back and change things. Write to the best of your ability the first draft and then set it aside and allow your mind to rest. Then, come back to it and revise all that needs it, keeping in mind that even after this revision, you can still change more. It's a beautiful thing to know that pencils were made with erasers, and in fact, writing can be improved upon over time. The way I get through my daily writing is by focusing on the end goal. Knowing that publication is possible even for imperfect writers. Know that even though your work will never live up to your demands, it may in fact still become a cherished story for someone else to read. Write your story for them, not for you. When you start doubting yourself, write for that boy or girl, man or woman who may pick up that story from a bookshelf and find something so reedeming in your words that their life is changed for it. You never know if anyone else will ever see those words on the screen in front of you, but you also don't know that nobody will. The impulse to quit is strong because you think you are not good enough. But all you need to remember is the word ONE. It takes ONE agent to read your story and fall in love. It takes ONE publisher to take a chance on you. It takes ONE person to pick up your book and read it and have it make an impact on their life. And then it was all worth it. Then the other seven billion people who hated it, including you, no longer matter, because now the story is forever.

I think you already know what you have to do. If you go your entire life and quit writing and look back on your deathbed, you'll know you missed out on something. If you write for the next fifty years and not a damn thing ever gets published, at least you'll look back and have a sense of relief in knowing you put your heart and soul into it and you'll die knowing you made every effort to make it happen.

Everyone has opinions Hillsy, but the only opinion that matters is yours. It's the only one that can ever truly defeat you. Today you sound defeated, but tomorrow is up to you.