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Why Aiming for Perfection Can Kill Your Writing
How to get your creative mojo back
Many people suffer from a need for personal perfection. While striving for greatness is to be applauded, aiming to produce flawless writing can be a drawback that stops creativity from flowing and dampens your mojo. Embrace free writing when you pen first drafts and edit alter. Only then will your writer’s voice land on the page.
If you’re a seasoned writer, you might have noticed your older work — you know, the embarrassing stuff you keep hidden these days — has a redeeming quality. Back then, before you knew about sentence structure and grammar, you weren’t afraid to let rip on the page with your pen or allow your fingertips to fly over your keyboard with gusto.
Because you weren’t scared of making mistakes — primarily, as you weren’t aware of the many errors you could produce — you were free. Unhampered by the need to make words perfect, you let them flow like a river. And your confidence showed.
Measure your prose against what you write now, and yes, you’ll be aghast about grammatical gaffes and repetitions. Still, you will miss the innocent version of you before who simply enjoyed writing rather than trying to get it all right.
