Pursuing Perfection Paralyzes Progress

Perhaps the worst thing anyone can do is compare their daily output to someone’s highlight reel. I’m sure everyone has heard this advice at some point in a social media world but for the writer, this comes in the form of comparing your rough/early draft to someone’s final draft. These final drafts have gone through many hands, from peer criticism, beta readers, editors, and advance readers– not only is it a final draft, it is one that has had community input to make it the best it can be.

This leads to a damning cycle — editing while drafting cycle.

It starts off simple enough: “I’m going to go back and redo this part, it sounds jank.”

Then your hour-long writing session becomes an hour-long editing session.

Worse, after doing this for the entire draft, you read through and decide, overall, it does not work. And thus it is cut. All that hard work to draft perfection only to have it not be used in the end. Or perhaps, after working so hard to make it perfect, the resolve to cut it wavers. Sure, it may not be the best for the story, but it’s written well and it doesn’t ruin the story so there’s no harm in keeping it, right?

But, if you edit as you draft, you will have fewer edits after the draft is complete! That’s a logical conclusion.

It is a lie.

A beautiful, glittering, perfectly worded l i e.

Long ago, I read a parable about a pottery class online and the philosophy behind it stuck with me. In researching for this blog post, I discovered the origin, Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland. I have edited and paraphrased for the purposes of this post:

On the first day of class, a ceramics teacher announced he would divide everyone into two groups. “All those on the left side of the studio will be graded solely on the quantity of work you produce. All those on the right, solely on the quality.” The grading mechanism was simple; on the final day of class the Quantity group would have their pots weighed. Fifty pounds earned an A, forty a B, and so on. The Quality group had to turn in a single pot.

At the end of the semester, a curious fact emerged– the highest quality works were made by the Quantity group! While the Quantity group produced pot after pot they learned from their mistakes and refined their techniques. The Quality group became caught up in their mistakes and failures of techniques and spent more time trying to theorize how to produce perfection. In the end, they had little more to show than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

Editing while writing your first draft puts you in the Quality group.

First drafts will never be perfect.

First drafts will never be agent-able or publishable.

The first draft is where you discover the story. Even if the story is outlined, your characters may take you on a new journey or you may discover the best-laid plans fail. But all of this is part of that messy magic of the first draft. Let yourself be consumed in it. Don’t worry about writing the next bestseller. Worry about writing as many words as you can to this fabulous story of yours. If the outline is the armature stage of story sculpting, then the first draft is the rough block.

Don’t listen to that evil voice that whispers, is it good enough?

Lose yourself in the magic of writing a novel. Allow yourself to be consumed by your world and enraptured in the lives of your characters. Worry about the quality later. It’s fine. All first drafts are messy.

I promise you that just like the quantity group, the more you write, the better the words naturally become. You won’t even notice it until you look back at your writing after multiple drafts have passed and discover how your drafts became cleaner and your words flowed better. Sure, it’s still messy, but it’s a lot quicker to clean now that you have experience cleaning under your belt.

Write on!

I believe in your novel!