Monday MetaWrite: Writing About Perfectionism
Around the 7000-10,000 word mark, the initial energy and excitement of the novelty of NaNoWriMo has ebbed, and my students begin to slow down. Seven days into the NaNo challenge, they are feeling the urge to return to the first 7000 or so words they’ve logged and spruce them up a bit.
We had a conversation on Friday about that urge: is it better to return to the opening scenes and deepen them with sharper details, fuller characterization, richer dialogue or is it better to continue going forward, adding new scenes, new revelations, new twists? My class was split, some saying that going back was just treading water, and the goal was to go forward. Others said they can’t go forward until the opening scenes are “perfect,” that they have trouble letting go of the need to “fix” everything.
So today’s MetaWrite is about perfectionism. The goal of the MetaWrite is to position students to think about themselves as writers and their writing process as an individual operation that can be examined. Writers write about writing and write about themselves as writers, so asking my students to undergo this valuable exercise reinforces their identity as a writer and it allows them to analyze their own process.
Monday’s MetaWrite
Choose one of the following quotes and write for seven minutes, responding to or reflecting on the quote from your experience as a writer. When time is called, share with a partner.
Social worker and researcher Brene Brown (2015) writes in her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, that “perfectionism is not the path that leads us to our gifts and to our sense of purpose; it’s a hazardous detour.” (128) Do you believe that perfectionism leads to your gift as a writer or is it a hazardous detour of anxiety and self-loathing? What is one experience in your life that showed you this?
Brown (2012) writes in Daring Greatly “Perfectionism is self-destructive simply because perfection doesn’t exist. It’s an unattainable goal.” (33) Do you agree or disagree that perfectionism is self-destructive to a writer? What is one experience in your life that showed you this?
Essayist Rebecca Solnit writes, “So many of us believe in perfection, which ruins everything else, because the perfect is not only the enemy of the good; it’s also the enemy of the realistic, the possible, and the fun.” (As quoted in Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, 2015) Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Are you suffering from perfectionism? Has it ruined the real, the possible, and the fun you might have had with writing? Why or why not?
In Elizabeth Gilbert’s (2015) Big Magic, she says fear and creativity are conjoined twins sharing the same womb, the same birthday, and a few vital organs. If you kill the fear, she contends, you also kill the creativity. “So I don't try to kill off my fear. I don't go to war against it. Instead, I make all that space for it. It seems to me that the less I fight my fear, the less it fights back. If I can relax, fear relaxes too.” (25) Do you “make space” for your fear of the blank page? What techniques have you found for relaxing with fear instead of fighting against it?
Here are two student responses from previous classes:
The hardest part of writing is being okay with what I've written. Right now, my vision is so clear but I'm already worried that what comes out on the page isn't going to be what I am picturing right now and it never is and I know it never will be. So I have to continue to struggle with myself and convince myself that what I've written is enough and good in itself. – Maggie
I, too, am a perfectionist and I, too, hate everything I write. But I’ve come to learn “done is better than perfect.” The important thing is to write forward, instead of writing in circles. Write through the bad. For me, it’s when I drive, lay in bed (without falling asleep), or take a shower. In those settings, I can work everything out and come back to the page the next day. -Elke