Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Trapped By Perfect

Lately I’ve been struggling with my writing, but I’ve identified the issue. I have been trapped by Perfect. I really thought two NaNos had cured me of my issue with Perfect, but my brain twisted Perfect just enough so that I didn’t see it as Perfect anymore.
My normal routine finds me with writing time somewhere around 9pm most nights. By this point, we’ve got the kids in bed and it’s finally quiet around the house. It’s also a time when I’m flat exhausted from working and taking care of the family. I had convinced myself that I couldn’t do ‘quality’ work when I was that tired, and if I couldn’t produce ‘quality’ there was no point in writing. It would be better for me to sack out on the couch, read some blogs, or maybe play a video game, and then get to writing once I was rested. You can guess how many nights I actually got to writing. Yeah, it wasn’t a large number.
But now I’ve identified the problem, and I can apply some of what my friend Paul has been teaching me about Learning. This is learning that leads to life change and has six components.
Observe, Reflect, Discuss, Plan, Accountability, Action.
I observed that I don’t write as much as I would like to.
I reflected on the reason for this.
I’m discussing it right now with you.
So what’s the Plan? I’m going to write, no matter how I feel, and no matter what level of quality I produce. Will I be able to use it all? Probably not. Might there be stuff there, that sometime when I’m not as tired I can improve upon? Almost certainly.
Where’s the Accountability? Saucy Ink. I’m going to make a thread and post what I do every night. No one really needs to reply to it, but knowing I’ve got to post what I did will keep me accountable.
The first week I did this, I wrote 4 of 7 nights. That’s not nearly good enough, but it’s much better than the week before.

4 comments:

Laurie Tom said...

I find if you write regularly, when you come back to your work two or three weeks later you can no longer tell which 500 words were the hard to write ones and which ones came easily. There might be specific instances here and there burned in to memory, but most of the time it's all the same in retrospect.

Unknown said...

There are definitely moments, and scenes that stay with me, but on the whole, you are exactly right.

tinkerdixiebell said...

I so relate to this. Writers Write..it is book and a thought. Keep writing. Your Mom says so. That is reason enough! :)

Mika said...

I can relate to this. I stopped blogging, as much as I had enjoyed it, because I didn't feel like I could produce "perfect" content. I recently relaunched my blog, but have not written much, and once again for the same reason.

Guess it might be time to reflect on why...