Patience and Production

I have such a struggly relationship with writing. I feel paralyzed by perfectionism and pressured to produce. Often when I actually do sit down in front of a blank page, I’ll just hammer something out and hit “publish,” knowing it’s neither my best work nor what I really want to say. But it’s done. And done is better than good, right? [she grimaces]

I think in a lot of cases, especially for those of us who hide behind perfectionism, done is better than good. It’s certainly better than perfect at any rate. But it’s not better than fully authentic and I feel like I struggle with that.

I’m in the middle of writing a lengthy follow-up to my last post and wrestling with the perfectionism/production pressure dichotomy. I have decided that it is important to me to get in the habit of publishing regularly if I am going to do this writing thing. I have also decided that I want to slow down and give some things more attention and care. 

So, inspired by Seth Godin, I’m going to set the goal of publishing something daily-ish. And at the same time, I’m plugging away at a longer-form story that’s important to me to tell. I worked on that first today, and then when I felt the urge to just publish what I had, I turned my attention away. 

We’ll see how it goes to practice both patience and production.