Perfectionism

[Stacy]

What happened yesterday may be more personal than creative perfectionism, but I think it demonstrates the problem well.

Yesterday I got wonderful compliments on Valley. And I crossed 150,000 views on the blog and the number of views for the day was quite high for how long it's been since an update.

So. I should be happy and confident, right?

Yeah. All it took was one little thing, someone who seemed a little upset with me, and I couldn't get to sleep and I asked my husband if I was a horrible person and I felt guilty and like I didn't deserve to write or have friends or readers or compliments on Valley.

That's why I don't read responses to LJ posts or threads sometimes, btw. My mind says "We don't need the tailspin of guilt and despair and self-hate that's happened before when we read replies or PMs, so let's just not read them."

So yeah, I am deeply perfectionist. And it does show up in my work. I have no idea how I did Valley in the early days, now that I think about it. Somehow I pushed the perfectionism aside, deluded myself into thinking that the early chapters were good. Or, you know, it'd been a while since I felt that social laser focused on me, picking out my faults and declaring me unworthy. And then the secrets came.

Notice how updates have slowed down now? 10 and Gunky aren't getting updated twice a week. Twice a month may be pushing it. Because subconsciously I'm thinking "Is this good enough? Is someone going to make a secret criticizing this? How are people going to judge this? Am I going to be found imperfect and wanting and deserving of being shunned?"

Of course that's on top of just the normal every day baseline creative perfectionism. But that...that can be a positive. It can lead me to spend an hour or so with my glasses off in the bathroom, studying how the faucet looks when it's all blurry. Or getting a bowl out of the cabinet and putting it on the counter ten, twenty, thirty times, however long it takes to know what Lilith would hear when Seth got out the fishbowl.

Other people would say that's crazy, but for me that sort of perfectionism makes sense. It works. It pushes me to do the best work I am capable of.

I just wish it didn't come with a negative side.

So - how does your perfectionism manifest and how do you deal with it? And if you don't suffer from it - can I have your brain?

A person who makes WoW videos that get way more views and attention than my little blog has also had to deal with this, and here's a wonderful song he made about it. I cried when I listened to it.

What I Am - AbandonationZ

[thelunarfox]

Well you know we're not the sort to say that's crazy. I mean, some of us have talks with our characters to prep them for their scenes.

And I was actually thinking of going out and getting some fresh bacon to cook one morning not because I crave bacon, but because it's been a while (mostly I eat turkey bacon and that's not the same at all) and I want to hear how it sounds cooking in the pan and find out how it smells. Only I can't smell, so my boyfriend needs to be awake and will have to explain the smell to me. ;D

It's more of a curiosity thing than a perfectionism thing. Which I tend to believe is ultimately why I write.

Curiosity helps fuel me and drive me on. I know I can't be perfect, and I don't even bother trying to be good. I just write what I feel needs to be written.


*breaks off a piece of the brain* I don't really need this part.

[laura]

Jul 19, 2010 10:43:06 GMT -5 @thelunarfox said:

I mean, some of us have talks with our characters to prep them for their scenes.

LOL! Now what kind of a crazy weirdo would do that!?

I do have a bit of perfectionism in me though, so I get this. (Or maybe anal-retentiveness is different than perfectionism? lol!)

Over the years though, I think I've grown myself a good hard ego, so the failures are a little less likely to get to me now than they used to be. I tend to put myself in situations where the criticisms I get will be thoughtful and professional and constructive - those kind don't hurt, because I know that I can never *actually* be perfect, and nothing I create will ever actually be perfect, and could never be. Never, never, never. Which means that we're always striving to do better, no matter how accomplished we think we've gotten. And so on, until the day we die.

I think that's true in all areas of life though. We've never really "arrived".

But still, I get how scary it is to put out something that you've put all of your best into. When that gets criticized, it's hard not to take it personally, because someone's just cut into the very depths of all you had to offer in that moment. Especially if they do it in a way that's rude or hurtful.

[rad]

I am more of a perfectionist at work than in play (though I still get annoyed if I can't get the exact right shot in my sims stories). I get performance anxiety so much about my thesis and about papers I have to write, even though I know I'm perfectly capable of doing them well, I want them to be beyond reproach!

[mdpthatsme]

Hmm, perfectionism (nice word) is beaten, slammed down, broken in itty bitty pieces, and crippled for life because of the phrase "nobody's perfect." And, it's true. I keep finding typos in big time New York Times bestselling published books. If they can screw up, we should be able to as well.

As for the posting, hell, I started posting my stories twice, sometimes three times a month now its down to one mostly (echo: mostly) every seven weeks. We all have lives; therefore, no one should expect us to be consistant.

salads and bread sticks

[tesseracta]

I think some of the best writers are perfectionists. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a good writer.

I think it's awesome that Stacy studied a blurry faucet, and that Lunarfox wants to make her boyfriend describe the smell of cooking bacon to her. This type of attention to detail always shows in the quality the work.

I guess my advice would be to listen to your inner perfectionist whenever it is helping you to be better, and to ignore the perfectionist when it is preventing you from writing. The way to get better at writing is to write more, and valuable lessons can be learned from making mistakes.

I'm not a perfectionist with my Sims legacy, because I'm just doing it for fun and challenge. I would be stricter with myself if I was working on something totally original though. I haven't tried to do that in over 10 years. : )

I always allow the very first draft of anything I write to be as crappy and horrible as can be. The point is just to finish the piece. Unfortunately, I have to write a jillion drafts of something before it's remotely presentable. It takes me forever and I'm too impatient. This is why I would never want to be a professional writer.

I took many writing classes in college, where you would get penalized if you missed deadlines, and also had to rewrite your piece several times during a semester. So take this for what it's worth!

[sb]

How do you get past it? Because you know you don't like some of the great 'classics'. Because it's subjective. Because art always will be subjective. There is no such thing as creating perfect art. There's no way to measure how perfect it is. It's not a tool. You can't shoot it at something and figure out how to make it better if it doesn't hit the target.

[Stacy]

Jul 19, 2010 10:43:06 GMT -5 @thelunarfox said:

Well you know we're not the sort to say that's crazy. I mean, some of us have talks with our characters to prep them for their scenes.

And I was actually thinking of going out and getting some fresh bacon to cook one morning not because I crave bacon, but because it's been a while (mostly I eat turkey bacon and that's not the same at all) and I want to hear how it sounds cooking in the pan and find out how it smells. Only I can't smell, so my boyfriend needs to be awake and will have to explain the smell to me. ;D

It's more of a curiosity thing than a perfectionism thing. Which I tend to believe is ultimately why I write.

Curiosity helps fuel me and drive me on. I know I can't be perfect, and I don't even bother trying to be good. I just write what I feel needs to be written.


*breaks off a piece of the brain* I don't really need this part.

*takes brain piece* Thanks.

Except, haha, now I'm all "Omg she's that's good without even trying, I must majorly suck."

How did the bacon thing work out?

[Stacy]

Jul 30, 2010 11:45:54 GMT -5 @sb said:

How do you get past it? Because you know you don't like some of the great 'classics'. Because it's subjective. Because art always will be subjective. There is no such thing as creating perfect art. There's no way to measure how perfect it is. It's not a tool. You can't shoot it at something and figure out how to make it better if it doesn't hit the target.

You pretty much hit the nail on the head there. I have severe problems with subjectivity.

I'm making progress, though. Slow torturous progress, where I'm playing catch up and trying to learn things that it seems like most other people learned when they were young, but hey. It's progress.

For instance, just last week someone slapped me upside the head on Boolprop about how they didn't like horror. I sent them a PM and thanked them and actually, for the first time ever, I considered that maybe sometimes people don't keep reading Valley or Gunky or 10 because it's not to their taste and that doesn't mean that I suck, as a writer or as a person.

So I can at least articulate that idea in my brain. Getting myself to understand it and not fall into the depths of despair when I see more clicks on Beginning than on Morning or 10.01 than 10.02 - that'll come. Eventually. If I keep trying.

[thelunarfox]

Seriously, me? Wow, Stacey, thank you. I didn't know you actually read my story.

But I don't think it's me. My style is very plain. It's the readers who fill in all the rest.


The bacon thing went well, but he majored in English and Creative writing and could only tell me that bacon smells like bacon. So I fired him. Now I'm having the hugest issue as to how to work it into what I want to work it into now. I wrote all my impressions down including what smell I sensed. It worked its way into the latest update a little. I'm just going to let it be and let it find its own way.

Plus now I have a small jar of bacon grease in my fridge.



SB, that's all so true.

[Stacy]

So, haha, went and finally read the answer to my PM on Boolprop. Turns out the person in question was more afraid of upsetting me. And told me not to think my stories sucked.

Damn, my brain is all messed up. Thanks for helping me try to untwist it.

[Stacy]

Hey, no rules, post as much in a row as you want. LOL.

Five Ways to Believe in Yourself

"In fact, one of the favorite things Audacity encourages mortals to believe is “Listen, if everyone likes what I’ve done, I haven’t gone far enough … it is not possible to be liked by everyone if I am deeply authentic and true to myself.”

[Stacy]

Jul 21, 2010 0:22:14 GMT -5 tesseracta said:

I think some of the best writers are perfectionists. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a good writer.

I think it's awesome that Stacy studied a blurry faucet, and that Lunarfox wants to make her boyfriend describe the smell of cooking bacon to her. This type of attention to detail always shows in the quality the work.

I guess my advice would be to listen to your inner perfectionist whenever it is helping you to be better, and to ignore the perfectionist when it is preventing you from writing. The way to get better at writing is to write more, and valuable lessons can be learned from making mistakes.

I'm not a perfectionist with my Sims legacy, because I'm just doing it for fun and challenge. I would be stricter with myself if I was working on something totally original though. I haven't tried to do that in over 10 years. : )

I always allow the very first draft of anything I write to be as crappy and horrible as can be. The point is just to finish the piece. Unfortunately, I have to write a jillion drafts of something before it's remotely presentable. It takes me forever and I'm too impatient. This is why I would never want to be a professional writer.

I took many writing classes in college, where you would get penalized if you missed deadlines, and also had to rewrite your piece several times during a semester. So take this for what it's worth!

That is wonderful advice, and I will try to take it.

But man - I admire the first draft thing. Did you know that Liquid Story Binder has a first draft feature that won't let you edit or even backspace? My skin crawls at that idea. I'm lucky to get a sentence out, much less a paragraph, before I start deleting and rearranging.

I think, though - I think that's just who I am and the way that I write. Like I read all the writing sites about "OMG write 2000 words a day or you aren't a writer!" and sometimes when I'm weak I'm like "OMG I'm not a writer!" and other times, when my brain is less twisted, I'm like "Hey, my hundred words a day is good enough for me and I'm not going to let you define my writing experience."

I've read that Vonnegut wrote something like the way I write. Meant it took him longer to finish a first draft, but that first draft was good and pretty close to the final draft.

And the thing about learning from mistakes, as opposed to beating yourself up over them - that's another life lesson I'm just now learning. In writing and in everything else.

[Stacy]

Jul 30, 2010 19:35:00 GMT -5 @illandrya said:

I sucked big time in my English classes at school. Barely scraped through with passes. Had teachers tell me it was a good thing I excelled at mathematics. But it's something that I wanted to do. I love to read and one day I want to publish a novel to pass on that love of reading to someone else.

But sb is soooo right, all art, whether painting, sculpture, acting or writing, is subjective. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". I actually tested it out in year 11 (much to the detriment of grades). We had an uber-feminist English teacher and were doing a semester on women in literature. One of the pieces we studied was The Taming of the Shrew. Our final semester exam was to write a story from either the traditional viewpoint (ie the younger sister in Taming of the Shrew) or the modern, emancipated feminist viewpoint.

I knew exactly what my teacher wanted, so I wrote the opposite. Only one in my class to do so, only one to fail. I'm not saying it was my best work, far from it, but I'm pretty sure it was good enough to pass with any other teacher.

Think about some of the learning experiences you've had (not just writing, anything). Which experiences helped you absorb and understand the skill/concept/behaviour better? More often than not, you'll find it's your mistakes. If you do something perfect the first time, it doesn't tend to make as big an impact on your life as something you had to work through and struggle for.

And if you're not "perfect" the first time, you tend to put more energy into it, you practise it, you work on perfecting it, especially if it's something that you want so that eventually, you may very well become more adept at this skill than the ones you find easy, because those ones you just shrug off and go "meh, too easy".

Damn man, where did everyone go to learn about the subjectivity thing? Guess I was jamming out to some tunes that day and missed it.

This made me think. Because I did think about my learning experiences.

I am used to doing things perfectly the first time.

Please don't think of this as bragging - obviously it's caused me a lot of problems and emotional pain, so it's not like I'm waving it around as something good that makes me somehow better than other people.

I grew up in a working class rural area and went to working class rural schools. So, unlike my husband and his siblings, I didn't have the IB program. I didn't have a magnet school. I never had the experience of failing, of losing, of not being the best. I won the spelling bee every year except one, when I was runner up. I won awards. I went to TIP while everyone else went to Governor's School, nerd camp for people who couldn't get into TIP. When I read my work out loud in class, people clapped. And on one occasion in creative writing, cried.

Oh, link to TIP. Duke TIP It's changed a lot since the mid to late 90s, though.

And I guess that became my identity, my story of myself. I was the best. I was the winner. My 7th grade verbal SAT score was in the top half of the top one percent. MedleyMisty is the party star.

And so, when I made a mistake, when I wasn't the best - when I was the runner up, when I made a 92 instead of a 93 on a test and didn't get to move on with the group who had gotten an A...it didn't make me determined. It made me depressed. It made me cry hot bitter tears of disappointment and self-hate.

I'm reclaiming "special snowflake syndrome". It's not an insult. It's a painful crippling mental disorder.

And I am going to conquer it.

[sb]

I think the subjectivity thing hit me as soon as I admitted that I absolutely hated most of the stuff I had to read in school. Loathed it. This is the good stuff? Why? It's BORING. I read my father's science fiction books because I loved them and slogged through Faulkner etc. because they made me read it, but I decided it was all one big scam. The one thing I remember thinking when I got out of college was thank god, never again will I have to read something I don't like.

That wasn't true, and should say something about my naivety. There are some objective standards but I honestly think they're pretty squishy.

I wish I believed it was possible to conquer crippling insecurity. Working around it helps. But it's hard for me to believe that anyone who gives what she creates can avoid hoping that other people like it, and that they will tell her they do. That's the sweet pain that comes with creation.